Something else young learners can embed on a blog

Something young learners can embed on a blog

Here's an idea suggested by Joan Rubies [blog] in a Macmillan Teachers' Day session in Girona, for something that you (or your learners!) can embed ("put", that is) on a blog.

It can't be personalised at all, and TVs and TV announcers that look like that will hardly be familiar to them, nor will it give them any speaking practice -- but they'll still enjoy doing it, I think.

There are other fun things at acapela.tv, though your learners would have to share most of them by email (I liked the goldfish, but you can't embed it on a blog).

But, given a choice between producing something like the above or writing me a "composition" on a piece of paper, I think I know which my young learners would prefer...!

Cartoons, animations and presentations

ToonDoo: OK, so it is homework, but at least it's fun!

Below, some of the links I provided in a creative writing workshop I gave recently for Macmillan (and welcome to any of you who came/are coming in Girona, Lleida or Palma!).

Cartoons and animations

• Dfilm MovieMaker
• Toondoo.com
  
• Voki
• Zimmertwins
  

Note that Dfilm MovieMaker is possibly not suitable for young learners.

Presentations

• Animoto.com
  
• Prezi
• Voicethread
  

Personally, I have a preference for using good old Word, or even PowerPoint, or (best) a blog, for creative writing as I think that with some of the above your learners will end up spending more time on the technology and less time on the writing and the interaction in English (with the latter being what we're really trying to obtain in the language classroom)...

But I accept that, especially with younger learners, being able to animate things is probably more exciting, and hence more motivating and engaging and thus as likely as anything to produce learning.

ABCs of ELT

A couple of interesting blogs that I've come across recently, the first Carol Read's ABC of Teaching Children, which has "Ideas, tips and resources for primary language teachers".

Carol was -- I think -- the person who said "it breaks my heart to see young learners with the same identical photocopy", or words to that effect.

I don't now remember when or where she said or wrote it, a long time ago, but it's one of those things you hear that has stuck with me ever since. Don't photocopy pictures for young learners, copy or draw them -- or get them to draw them!

You'll find other good ideas on teaching young learners on Carol's website, as well as in her excellent 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom.

The second blog is Scott Thornbury's An A-Z of ELT, which is an extension to the book of the same name, by the same author.

Do people actually read blogs...? They do, and they participate, on this one, which has some fascinating discussions on it.

See also Create your own A-Z... Or get your learners to do the same, which makes a fun activity.

No one writes postcards any more, especially not teens

At the seaside in Asturias | Photo: Isabel Walton

Below, the piece of writing my daughter (14) had to do for her English teacher this weekend, a task from a popular coursebook which asked the students to look at a model and then "Imagine you are on holiday. Write a postcard to a friend":

Dear Kate,

Greece is incredible! I'm having so much fun! The people I'm staying with are really nice and they have a beautiful huge white beach house in Santorini.

The weather is perfect. It's very sunny. Sometimes it's too hot but it's normally OK. At night there's always a gentle breeze that is very refreshing.

Here there are plenty of original tiny old shops that sell souvenirs, food, bracelets, clothes... I'll make sure I get you something before I leave.

Tomorrow we're going to a small sandy beach in a nice cosy village, in the seaside. I think it'll be great!

In bold, highlighted by my daughter, one of the language points that they were instructed to incorporate (and highlight).

My problem with the task is that it's just unrealistic. My daughter collects postcards but has never in her life written one to a friend while on holiday, nor is she ever likely to. And 14-year-olds, in my experience, aren't actually that interested in "nice cosy villages".

My daughter finished her "postcard" by saying:

The other day I was lying on the beach and suddenly this incredibly gorgeous blond Greek guy called Kostos, approaches and offers to take me on his boat. He's very nice. I think I may have fallen in love all over again.

See you soon.
Lots of love,

Miranda.

Her Dad is going to say "NO!!!" when she asks if it's OK to go with Kostos on the boat ,-) but that's more like it -- that's more what is going to occur to a 14-year-old to write about.

You have to feel some sympathy for coursebook writers: the book in question was published in 2006 -- long enough ago for Facebook to be practically unheard of, but Facebook is where my daughter would actually be writing about her holidays (or rather about Greek guys!).

While coursebook writers can't keep up with the speed of change, at least we teachers can, and a Facebook entry, or a text message or an email would be so much more realistic, and so much more interesting to young teens as a task.

If you had a class blog, they could also be posted there and shared and the "replies" could go there too, in the comments, also making it a more real, more engaging task. Partner your learners, and then "Kate" would have to reply to "Miranda's" messages, and vice versa.

Blog postings could also include photos, preferably not stolen from Google-is-Evil, but taken by the learners themselves, or their family, from their holidays (as in the example, above, which my daughter took while on holiday in the north of Spain).

Now if you had an interactive whiteboard...

Getting teens to listen, and write, in English

I very much liked one of the many suggestions Usoa Sol made in her talk, Listen up! Getting teens to listen in English, given at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference -- getting kids to write emails from the protagonists of the song.

Usoa suggested Dido's Thank You, though I wonder if it's got a strong enough storyline and whether or not it tells us enough that we can interpret about the characters. Perhaps White Flag might work better, partly because you've got a YouTube videoclip there that appears to add something to the story.

I'm showing my age here, I guess, but one I'd really go for would be Springsteen's Johnny 99 (video above), which has a more powerful, more obvious story in it, I think.

Neat idea -- and so much better and richer than just another gap-filled song. You could then get your teens to respond to each other's mails...

Sites for Teachers of (Very) Young Learners

Hi and welcome if you came to Monday's technology session on our teaching very young learners course...

The following, in alphabetical order, were some of the links I suggested to sites with either lots of resources for teachers of young learners and/or -- and perhaps more importantly -- ideas and the resources for professional development.

• British Council "Kids" site
• DLTK's Crafts for Kids
• EnchantedLearning.com
  
• First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts
• IATEFL Young Learners SIG (see also its discussion group and list of other links)
• National Geographic Kids site
• OneStopEnglish.com (subscription required for full access)
• PrometheanPlanet.com for resources to be used on interactive whiteboards (registration required)
• TeachingEnglish.org.uk (see also the Language Assistant site with its "Primary Tips", "Games" etc sections)
• Times Educational Supplement (registration required)

Great sites! But are they...?
As I suggested in the seminar, while there are undoubtedly some great resources on such sites, I'd be just a little wary about becoming a heavy user of them. The trouble with them, I would suggest, is that it may end up being the teacher not the learners using the technology, whereas I think it should in fact be the other way round.

Go for the sites that are giving you ideas, rather than printouts -- the IATEFL YL SIG, for example, rather than First School, or the community section on TES, rather than the resources section on the same site.

As my DELTA tutor, Neil Forrest once said to us: "An idea is worth a thousand photocopies".

Footnote: year groups, ages...
On some of the above, where there is so much material it may be helpful to search by age group, and on the sites not intended primarily for ELT, it maybe helpful to know how ages correspond to the years kids are in... Wikipedia tells us -- for England, Scotland and the US.

From the same seminar:

>> Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?
>> Resource books for teaching young learners

Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?

Customisable Mr Men stickers from the TES site...

One of the resources sites I suggested in the technology session on our very young learners course this week was the Times Educational Supplement (TES) site, which has over 30,000 free resources, for all subjects (not principally ELT).

From TES, I took two examples (registration required to view them): a PowerPoint Jeopardy template, and some customisable Mr Men stickers. For very young learners, note that you can edit the text, or eliminate it altogether (see image above).

Both would be huge time-savers: the former would require a minimum amount of prior knowledge of PowerPoint, but would still save you hours of work; the latter not much more than a bit of fiddling about to get them to print out on sticky labels...

But would you actually want to use them...?

That would be a very definite YES!, to judge from the comments about them on TES, but personally I have my doubts. In both cases it would the teacher using the technology, but it surely ought to be the learners doing so. You could, for example, have (older) learners write questions, which would certainly be a start, if you wanted to play Jeopardy.

As for the stickers, personally I'd either create my own (as, see image below, you did at the start of my session) or else I'd get my learners to create the labels for each other...

Mr Personal: it's so easy to make your own!

There's also the question of the time it's going to take: it was so much quicker to produce our own -- and so much more personal!

Sometimes the resources technology offers are in fact not necessarily the best solution...

Resource books for teaching young learners

Some of the excellent titles in the OUP resource book series

In the technology session we had on our teaching very young learners course this week, I mentioned the books in the superb OUP resouce book series for teachers of young learners.

Among the titles we have in the library (not quite the complete series) are the following, with the age groups they are intended for given in parenthesis:

• Art and Crafts with Children (4-12)
• Assessing Young Learners (6-12)
• Creating Stories with Children (4-14)
• Drama with Children (5-12)
• Games for Children (4-10)
• The Internet and Young Learners (7-15)
• Projects with Young Learners (5-14)
• Storytelling With Children (7-14)
• Very Young Learners (3-6)
• Young Learners (5-12)

Sample pages, activities, etc., are available online (registration required).

Clearly, not all the activities are suitable for very young learners, but I can most highly recommend the series...

Sure, you can find great things on the Internet, but you've got wonderful things in books, too!

What should you do in a private class with a kid?

Blogging: it's so easy and is not just "the usual stuff..."

You've got a private class with a 13-year-old girl, who's getting on fine in English at school, but whose Mum wants her to be really good at English, and can afford to pay for it. What do you do with her for three hours a week...?

The question came from Liza on our post-CELTA course support forum and Liza was looking for "another book we could use for the classes that covers all the usual stuff, reading, grammar etc" and she wanted "to make the classes a bit more exciting and interactive".

Now I actually happen to be myself the father of a 13-year-old girl, who's fascinating to listen to on what makes classes "a bit more exciting" (or otherwise!) and I can't help thinking that another book to cover "all the usual stuff" isn't going to have the desired effect.

I'd get the kid to blog.

I'd have her blog on whatever subject/s interest her: whatever she's into, music or dance or xtreme skateboarding, I'd get her to write about it on a blog. I'd get her to find stuff on the Internet on it; get her to talk to you about it; provide the language she needed to say what she can't yet say; and get her to write about it on a blog... which I'd make really private.

And in that way, do the reading and the grammar, and lots more besides...

It's so easy to set up a blog [video] and it's not just the usual stuff, which -- chances are -- she's probably already bored with from school...

Great site for kids: National Geographic Kids

National Geographic Kids: goofy but great

This one actually comes from one of my favourite web design sites, A List Apart, which suggested National Geographic Kids as an example of a site that "focuses on clarity (...) even if the site is also goofy" [>> article].

Now it may seem a bit goofy if you're an adult but if you happen to be a kid "goofy" probably isn't your reaction when you read "Ruins, Romans and the world's best pizza". And the videos, games, activities (etc., etc.)... why, they look like fun, which is maybe how learning should look!

Sure, I'm a kid: yeah, maybe I am a bit goofy but I also know what kind of website I like!

If you happen to be teaching kids, or doing CLIL [>> more about CLIL], it's your kids' kind of site...

10 books for teaching young learners

Someone on our post-CELTA support group asked the question the other day... Did anyone have suggestions on how to spend a £500 budget (!) on books for the staffroom for those teaching young learners?

These would be my suggestions, with the cash left over being spent on giving each teacher their own personal copy of the first...

A skill you can teach yourself...
First a supremely useful skill, which will entertain and teach your young learners, and will save you ever again having to waste your life stealing pictures from Google-is-Evil:

• 1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy, Andrew Wright (Longman): Unquestionably my first choice, this book gave me the most useful skill I've learnt in nearly 30 years in teaching [Amazon]

A bit of theory...
Then a bit of theory, with plenty of practical ideas in these three books too:

• Teaching Languages to Young Learners, Lynne Cameron (CUP): Essential background reading, you don't want to teach young learners without being familiar with what's in this book [Amazon]
• Teaching Teenagers, Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz (Longman): Definitely my next choice. In my experience, one of the vital things about teaching kids is your attitude to them: this book changed my attitude to kids, radically so [Amazon]
• How Languages Are Learned, Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (OUP): One that all language teachers should read [Amazon]

Books full of practical classroom ideas...
And then five great resource books in the superb Oxford series:

• Drama with Children, Sarah Phillips (OUP), [Amazon]
• Storytelling with Children, Andrew Wright (OUP), [Amazon]
• Art and Crafts with Children, Andrew Wright (OUP) [Amazon]
  
• The Internet and Young Learners, Gordon Lewis (OUP) [Amazon]
• Writing with Children, Jackie Reilly and Vanessa Reily (OUP) [Amazon]

I put drama and storytelling first in my list there deliberately, with arts and crafts next. One of the most frequently asked questions on our support group is "Can anyone suggest games for young learners?".

But, at least in my own experience, I've found that drama and stories and making things are often in the end more engaging, more entertaining and more language-rich than most "games".

Oh, go on then, there's also a Games for Children in the same Oxford series...

Facebook makes you stupid?

An unnamed US study reckons 68% of school pupils using Facebook got "significantly lower" exam marks than those who didn't, according to The Week, the study referred to probably being that of Ohio State, according to TIME.

What it doesn't say -- though I haven't personally read the actual report -- is whether or not the exams themselves were actually testing what the learners know, or were relevant to their learning styles or actual real-world needs, and I suspect that quite possibly they weren't.

I might just be tempted to use Facebook rather than e-mail as a means of communication with learners as -- says my daughter (13) -- no-one ever uses e-mail now, at least not young learners.

What would put me off would be the privacy issues. While creating a new Facebook profile recently, I got asked did I want to be friends with these 25 people -- all of whom looked suspiciously young, and none of whom I recognised...

Hold on, I did recognise them: they were all 13, all girls, and all my daughter's friends. If you're going to use technology with young learners, you want a network that is a whole lot more secure than that...

Marc Prensky on the 21st Century Digital Learner

Don't bother me, Mom, I'm playing with my phone...

A (fairly) new article by Marc Prensky: Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner.

On Nik Peachey's excellent Quick Shout blog, you can see Marc Prensky being interviewed by Gavin Dudeney at IATEFL 2009.

If you are not familiar with Marc Prensky [website | Wikipedia], his 2001 Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives article has been very influential.

Non-linear PowerPoint

PowerPoint: you can make it interactive!

As language teachers, you probably aren't big users of Microsoft PowerPoint. It might well be a tool you use for giving a talk or workshop at a conference or if, like me, you teach technology. But, as language teachers, using it is probably rapidly going to produce Death by PowerPoint and, in any case, you're not supposed to be lecturing your learners, are you?

As a workshop presenter, you certainly want to avoid inducing Death by PowerPoint, which is caused by -- among other things -- using too much text and too many bullet points per slide and then simply reading monotonously through it all, which your audience could have done at home on their own.

If you can make it an interactive presentation in some way, in which you respond to and dialogue with your audience, PowerPoint can nevertheless be a powerful tool. If, on the other hand, your audience has gone terribly quiet, best call the doctor quick -- for yourself.

Creating a non-linear presentation is one way to ensure that you respond not lecture. The following links came from the February 2009 issue of the Office Insider for Microsoft Office newsletter:

• Tailoring your message to the audience is everything!
• Relational Presentation: the visually interactive side of PowerPoint
  

If you're not that expert with PowerPoint, and want an easy way to allow yourself a non-linear PowerPoint presentation, you do have a "Go to" function which allows you to jump to whichever slide you want -- and not necessarily the next one:

Right-clicking in "Slide Show view" allows you to jump to whichever slide you want...

Make the learners make the PowerPoints
With learners, PowerPoint can be fun too -- for making presentations (eg. of the results of webquests), as well as for creative writing exercises.

With the latter, young learners love making multimedia stories with PowerPoint, including sound and images as well as text.

See also: Using PowerPoint Interactively in the Classroom

Graffiti creator: would I want to use it?

Editing the letters individually, with greater contrast between them, would have made the word ("create") more legible

Here's one I'm not so sure about: graffiticreator.net...

It's fun, though I'd have liked an un-do button, but maybe that's just me: I've never actually had a go with an aerosol can and reckon true graffiti artists don't, ever, "un-do"... ,-)! But would I actually want to use this with students?

Criteria for using technology
When I'm lesson planning and look at a website or an activity of some sort involving the use of any technology, I ask myself the same questions I suggest in the technology session on our CELTA course:

• Is it a suitable level of difficulty, language and maturity for my learners...?
• Will my learners enjoy doing it...? Will it engage them...?
• How can / must I adapt it...?
• What are the aims...?
• What are the stages...?
• What language is being used, practised and learnt...?
• What are we going to do with what we've found / created...?
• What is the return-on-investment (time spent setting up, in class...)?
  

With graffiticreator.net, my doubt is really over the language that is going to be produced and used: is it merely going to engage my learners at the visual level and absorb them in understanding how the site works, or am I going to be able to create a task that will really produce a lot of meaningful (linguistic) interaction?

Decision time...
On balance, that looks to me like one that will go into my "For the kids" file in my favourites -- for my own kids, that is, they'll like it, but I don't think I'll be using it in the classroom with learners.

Now, on the other hand, if we had a class blog, and I wanted to decorate it, and we had -- say -- a new "graffiti word a week", and the kids wanted to do it in their own time, at home, or when I'd got someone finished all their other work, then I might consider it -- but my aim would not then be a linguistic one.

The power of story telling

Once upon a time...

Another one I didn't have to search for, as it came to me via my RSS feed: an article on storytelling by Mario Rinvolucri on my favourite ELT site, teachingenglish.org.uk.

Story telling, Mario says, is "a uniquely powerful linguistic and psychological technique in the hands of a language teacher" and suggests various story-telling techniques that a teacher can use.

One of the most frequently asked questions on our post-course support group must surely be "Can anyone suggest games for younger learners?". Yes, here, here and here, but is it games or stories that will really engage your young learners?

For slightly older learners, ones that can already write in English (though it doesn't have to be at a particularly high level), don't just stick to story-telling, I'd say, but get your learners to enjoy story-writing...

To learn more about story-telling, there is also the excellent Storytelling with Children, by Andrew Wright.

Wanting to understand your young learners

The "Think" section of the TeachingEnglish.org.uk site is one with lots of articles which are well worth reading for anyone just starting out in English teaching. There are things that will be familiar to you from your Celta course, but other things that might be new to you.

One that caught my eye this morning (among my RSS feeds) was one on Making a difficult young learner group better, with the problems of teaching young learners being one that your Celta course won't have dealt with in any great depth.

The article suggests three "possible strategies":

• Introducing a competitive element
• Clarity of class rules
• Rewarding co-operation

My own experience of teaching young learners, and what my colleagues have shared with me, suggests however that there's something else, something more fundamental: that is not your learners' attitude to English (or to you) but your attitude to them that really makes all the difference to how they behave in class.

Take a genuine interest in them (what are they interested in, what makes them tick, what makes them misbehave...), start to understand them -- start to want to understand them -- and you'll have started to make yourself a better teacher of a difficult age group.

Related post >> RSS feeds for ELT

Incy wincy spider

If you are teaching very young learners, this morning my RSS feed for teachingenglish.co.uk tells me there are some great things you could do on creepy crawlies, a subject dear to the heart of all young learners (well, nearly, anyway!) -- and not a few webmasters, as you can see from our photo.

The Language Assistant section on teachingenglish.co.uk is well worth checking out if you do teach small kids.

See also >> Incy Wincy Spider, the song (etc)

Eyes right! A fun way to revise grammar

This is a fun way to revise grammar!

Loved this activity, by Jo Budden, which I got from my RSS feed for teachingenglish.org.uk.

You get all your learners to stand up, get themselves into a nice long line, and then dictate to them sentences which are either right or wrong.

If they think the sentence is "right", they take a "big step" to the right (though as you can see in the photo, I got my learners just to look right or left); if they think it's wrong, they step or look left. You could make it an elimination game, Jo suggests, until you've got a "winner" -- or make it boys vs girls.

You know the grammar casino game? You could play it like that, with the sentences you dictate being right or wrong grammatically.

It's fun -- and might be especially good as a break for your hyperactive teens...

Eyes: an idea for a class blog

Mystery eyes: someone in our class

Here's an idea that might be fun if you have a class blog: every week, we publish a photo of the eyes of someone in the class, and we then attempt to guess who our "mystery eyes" belong to.

By a "class blog", I mean one on which your learners author and publish the content and, besides class projects [example], and what you might publish as being of interest to your students [example], having a different pair responsible for the blog each week will get the students interested and involved. You could have such things as a "YouTube video of the week" or "Album of the week", which the students would be responsible for picking -- and "Mystery eyes of the week" would also be fun.

You want the students to take the photos and edit them and want to ensure that other students do comment on the blog, something they could be doing before class, during class, or at home...

An important issue is privacy, so do make sure you have appropriate school/parental permission before you start publishing photos, especially if you are doing this with young learners!

Witches and more stuff for Halloween lessons

WhaaaaaaaaaahHHHHHH! Photo: KateT

It's getting round to that time of year again... On the British Council's Learn English Kids site, you have things about witches and wizards -- "things" being songs and jigsaw puzzles and stories and and stuff you can print, a link which I picked up from the Council's excellent ELTeCS list.

Don't print it, make it!
Stuff you can print...? I've always had my doubts about that -- especially if we are talking about young learners. Who was the teacher trainer I once heard say that it broke her heart "to see young learners all with the same photocopied picture"?

You want ideas, not printable activities, I would suggest -- and for pictures, you want to get your young learners to draw them. If you've got a class blog, that's where they should be published.

If we're talking teenagers, for whom drawing witches is undoubtedly not going to be cool, you could get them to take photos of Halloweeny things on their mobile phones -- which again could be great on a class blog.

Don't worry so much about the quality of the images -- just quick snapshots like the one at the top of this post (detail of the decorations at Reception here at school) will produce a great collection.

Creating, not consuming
If you then got your learners to write ghost stories (possibly featuring the creatures they've taken photos, or drawn pictures of), then they'd be creating, not merely consuming -- and that's what technology allows us to do.

In Spanish, here's another idea that makes a great Halloween activity.

Related posts

>> A Halloween project
>> Halloween lessons

Great stuff on YouTube for English teachers

Bruce Springsteen interviewed on the OGWT in 1978

There's a ton of great listening comprehension on YouTube, stuff that's so much more interesting than the things that come on your coursebook CD -- to start with because (especially to kids!) watching a video clip of (say) a song is so much more interesting than a CD...

Getting them to do the work
One of my colleagues suggested having the learners, in pairs, search for a suitable interview with a famous person, and then write listening comprehension questions for another pair. Get them to choose the video -- don't you make the choice.

Doing that means that there is so much more active involvement of the learners, with them wanting to listen, and wanting to listen again. Whether or not they come up with great listening comprehension questions is not important either: what the activity does is make them creators, not merely consumers of content.

Or letting someone else do the work...?
If you prefer someone else to do part of your lesson planning for you, teflclips.com is a site which will interest you.

On yappr.com you have YouTube-like videos conveniently sorted by subject and level of difficulty, many of them with a subtitle option.

In a recent issue of HLT, there were more ideas for exploiting YouTube.

And here's another idea from Nik Peachey's excellent blog...

Word(le) clouds, Paint pictures

Wordle cloud, Paint fish

Here's one that came from one of the sessions on our CELTA course in the last week...

I suggested Ananova.com (specifically the bizarre news stories in its Quirkies section) as a great default home page for both teachers and learners, with the Dead angler becomes fish food story an example of a text you could do in class.

We then took the story -- assuming that we'd already "done" the text in class -- to Wordle.net and converted it into a cloud. By a bit of simple editing, first with Wordle, then with Paint (which we used to add an eye to create a word cloud fish), we've then converted the text into a picture which we could use to decorate a class blog.

As I suggested earlier, I still have my doubts about using Wordle as a classroom activity -- principally because your learners will be manipulating the image, but not the words themselves: they want to be tinkering with the language not just looking at it, if we want people to learn language.

But as an "after reading" activity, to add some color to a class blog, to add some fun, you might still justify it...

And as one of you pointed out in at least one of the sessions this week, we might also possibly use the word cloud as either a prediction or a reconstruction activity...

>> How to change the default start page of your browser

Wordle: create and edit your own word clouds

This one I came to me from Ana Falcon by email on the ELTECS-Latinamerica list...Wordle allows you to take a text and turn it into a word cloud and then to customise it in a variety of cool ways. My original text was about El Alux, a spectacular bar located underground in a cenote, a geological formation in the Yucatan.

What could you do with Wordle with learners? In her message, Ana suggested "You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends". My suggestion would be that it's another example of something you shouldn't be doing -- but that your learners might enjoy, especially if they are young.

Would they actually learn anything from it...? I'm not entirely convinced that they would. But they would have fun doing it, and it would involved actively doing something; it could be a way of persuading them to look back at previous texts (or finding new ones); it might be a way of revising vocabulary if what you asked them to do was turn a text they had "done" into a Wordle; and if you had a class blog it would produce some attractive images (you would have to take a screen capture and edit it [how?], as it's not possible to create an image directly at Wordle).

The ELTECS lists are well worth subscribing to -- apart from anything else for the links Ana suggests at regular intervals.

Making collages with Glogster

Glogster: Yes, and those creep crawlies moved about on the page... Yuck!

Like ImageChef [see previous post], Glogster allows you to create images, though the latter is a lot more sophisticated, allowing you to create much more complex collages, making it suitable for older young learners with a higher level of English.

If you got your learners to work together in pairs to create their collage, there is a lot of potential for interaction and language use. You can't quite understand how it works? Don't worry, your kids will get it immediately!

As always in the technology classroom, you want to make sure that language is English!

Alternatively, you could get them to create their collages at home and then present them to the class in an oral presentation.

See also >> Making animations with Dfilm

My basketball jersey is blue

ImageChef is one for young learners at a very low level -- I think.

They'd love it, I'm sure (my 12-year-old daughter and all her classmates do, for one thing) but I say "I think" because I'm not sure how much language learning you would get out of it.

Basically, it allows you to create a simple image like the one on the right from a series of templates, something which you could have your learners do for homework. If they then brought them back to class to show each other (or display on the walls, or post on a class blog...) you would get such language as "My shirt is red", "It's a basketball jersey" out of it.

As always, before I used the technology, I'd ask "How much language learning am I going to get out of it?", "What's the return on investment?"

The "investment" is in terms of time -- your time and your learners' time (in class or at home). The "return" is the amount of language learning and practice you get out of the activity.

The return on investment (ROI) is low? Don't do it. Your ROI is high? Go for it!

See also >> Making collages with Glogster

Virtual worlds

Here's an interesting article on Edutopia.org that shows how virtual worlds can provide "a shared online universe in which students can play to learn": Get a Life: Students Collaborate in Simulated Roles,

It mentions Whyville, "a Web-based virtual world that provides inquiry-based education for middle school students" and some of the projects that schools have done using it, as well as looking at some of the benefits and (ahem) "challenges".

Whyville isn't Second Life -- it's not so sophisticated, as you can see from the avatar I was starting to create (above right) -- or Teen Second Life, but it's simplicity might just appeal to kids, if you're teaching them.

Edutopia [about] (the cynic in me loves that name! .-) provides "Information and Inspiration for Innovative Teaching in K12 Schools".

Christmas lessons

Happy Catalan Christmas!

It must be getting round to that time of year again... Christmas! There are some Christmas lesson plans on DevelopingTeachers.com, if you are looking, and another 2 million plus on Google, it would appear.

A webquest would be one idea, and here's a Christmas webquest from OneStopEnglish.

If you have a class blog, they could post their results there, or they could write about their own Christmas traditions as well as ones they discover in a webquest (in the image, above, a Catalan Christmas tradition).

If you've got young learners, somewhere I would always look for ideas would be EnchantedLearning.com, where there are some results.

A Christmas card is always fun with kids -- you could get them to draw a nativity scene and then label the different things (shepherds, kings, donkeys, the Baby Jesus, etc) so that they learn some English too.

Teaching Teenagers

A book I read a long time ago and now wish I'd included as one of my list of 10 ELT books your Mum could get you for Christmas: Teaching Teenagers, by Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz or "Teaching Teenagers: Model Activity Sequences for Humanistic Language Learning", to give it its full title.

I've personally never been much good teaching teenagers -- I've not got the patience for it, apart from anything else. But if you have to, and many of you teaching in private language schools will have to, read this book. It made me look at my teenagers in a different way: teenagers aren't wild animals (no, really!), they're human beings, too.

I can't remember now who first suggested the idea to me, or whether or not it was in this excellent book, but the vital thing about teenagers is not their attitude to learning English (or to you), but your attitude to them. Treat them like wild animals, and that's how they'll behave...

It takes something special to get on with teens; whether you've got that or not, ask your Mum to get you this book -- and get yourself some attitude!

>> Buy it on Amazon.co.uk

Halloween lessons

On TeachingEnglish.org.uk's section of resources for teaching children, there's a new .pdf file with ideas for Halloween lessons.

>> More ideas for Halloween lessons

Ungoogle your cats!

Titi the Cat...

Someone asked me the other day whether or not an image of a cat found on Google (not that shown above) was going to print out well for use in class -- on the black-and-white printer they had access to.

As the contrast in the picture was low, I said I thought not and suggested looking for a different one.

And to enlarge it? Possibly the best way to enlarge is by using the photocopier to do it for you.

It was actually for use in a class on our young learners extension course and so I suggested that, rather than using Google, that the young learners themselves should draw the pictures -- and would then be able to describe their cats.

I've got no idea how the lesson eventually went, but I later happened to be in the actual classroom used and noticed the drawings of cats on the walls (see one example above) -- and like to imagine that the lesson meant much more to the kids, that they learnt more because they participated and were more involved in it.

Ungoogle!
I thought I'd just invented the word "ungoogle", but Google itself currently finds around 34,000 results for it.

But, because I think Google-is-Evil, and perhaps sometimes has an adverse effect on the lessons we take into our classrooms, it's one I think teachers should adopt.

There are better places to search than Google, there are better places to find images...

Steal and photocopy... or draw your own images?

A monster in the Internet Room! It's got a tail! It's got 3 eyes!

Rebecca is currently taking the CELT YL course with us at IH Barcelona and brought this into the Internet Room before class... Wow! It's so impressive, and so much more so than a monster she could have stolen from Google Images.

She was going to get her kids to draw monsters too, and then say what body parts their monsters had got.

You could pinch the pictures off of the Web, but how much more engaging for your young learners to draw their own!

>> 1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy

Arts and crafts with your learners

More from the very excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk site:

• A new article on Art in the classroom
  
• One on Arts and crafts with young learners
• Full list of articles

Looking for something to do with English teaching...? Don't go to Google! Go somewhere like TeachingEnglish...!

MySpace or Our Space?

The Electric Shoes: Great band, great example of what you can do with MySpace

In the US in particular, My Space is hugely popular, though there have been doubts raised in US High Schools about security problems (do you want it to be that easy for all those crazy people out there in cyberspace to contact your young learners?).

Here's a great example (not ELT-related) of what you can do with MySpace.

MySpace is very easy to use, and I can see why your teenagers might love it...

Our space, not my space
Personally, however, I've got two things against it, one the security issue (check how many of the MySpace FAQs refer to security: there must be a problem with it!).

The other is that I hate the name "my space".

One of the technologies I do like a lot for language learning is blogging, particularly if what you've got is a collaborative, team blog, to which all your learners contribute.

Then you're talking our space, not my space...

Our amazing houses project

Carla's spaceship house (not shown, the accompanying description)

The kids (8-10 year olds) with one of my colleagues here at IH Barcelona, Oliver Harris, have produced some absolutely fabulous houses.

The idea came from the Macmillan Heinemann coursebook Little Detectives Oliver is using, where there is an example. The kids then came up with a Sun Flower House, an Umbrella House, a Dustbin House, a Cloud House, and Shell House, and many others.

"Last year they came up with even more amazing things," Oliver says. "My favourite was a Rolling House, which was inside a football! Kids have just got so much imagination -- and the detail is just so incredible."

A blog project?
We're currently displaying the project on a noticeboard in the corridor. Had Oliver ever thought of incorporating technology into the project somehow, say, publishing the work on a class blog?

"I'm a bit of a technophobe," Oliver confesses, "but yes, I'm sure they'd love it."

The work they've done really is something to be proud of. There are two good reasons why you might want to use technology there: (a) because they'd love it, as Oliver says, and (b) a blog would be something to be even more proud of: "We made that!"

Young Learners session, May 25

Teaching young learners with technology... Does your classroom look like that?!

Hi and welcome, if you came to today's session!

One point from the session, something I don't think I mentioned, but should have done... I think Peter brought the subject up but we didn't then return to it. If you are going to blog or podcast with young learners, you definitely must get signed written permission from the parents. You'd also want to obtain permission (first) from your headmaster/mistress or Director of Studies.

More on privacy here on this blog...

There will be a couple of other things relating to the session that I will add in the next day or so.

Can you post pictures of young learners?

500+ crayon points... that's quite a collection!

The subject came up at our young learners' seminar today... Can you post pictures of your young learners on the Internet, for example on a blog?

I'd personally say, no, and definitely not without your school's and the kids' parents' permission -- signed, and in writing.

Even then, I think it's vital to protect your kids' privacy.

In the seminar, one of the things I suggested you could have kids blog about would be the things they collect. I showed you the example of my daughter's collection of pencil points, shown above. I've partly got round the privacy issue by not posting a picture of her face... and it still makes an interesting photo.

But even then, I'd still get written permission to publish it on the Web.

Resources for teaching children

The excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk has a small collection of resources for teaching children, including articles on using stories (the latest addition), songs and flashcards.

It also points you to another British Council's website, LearnEnglishKids, which has lots more resources.

See also

• Where to begin with Young Learners
  
• Other sites for teaching young learners.

Making animations with young(-ish) learners

Here are two sites which enable your learners to make fun animations.

Dfilm MovieMaker allows you to select your character (eight can be seen, left above), add what they're saying, etc, etc.

Dfilm.com
Using Dfilm's MovieMaker you pick from a choice of preset backgrounds, skyscapes, scenarios (rendez-vous, chase...) and characters, write their lines, add music and -- in a series of straight-forward clicks, create your animation.

Once you've finished, you can send it to a friend -- or yourself -- which will then give you the URL (address), so that you can see it again.

ZimmerTwins (above) gives you just three characters to play with but some crazy additional features...

ZimmerTwins.com
At ZimmerTwins you can create similar animations, though you've only (currrently) got three characters to play with. You can save your movies, watch other people's and comment on them, among other features.

Like Dfilm, it's very intuitive to work with -- and kids will love exploring what you can do with it. The "How to make a movie" section explains all, if you are in any doubt (and makes good listening comprehension practice too!)

Note that you have to register (and provide an email address). You could get round your students doing that by registering yourself, and having them use your username.

Which is better?
Of the two, besides not requiring registration, Dfilm also has the advantage that your learners can input more text (important if you want them to be able to write some English).

On the other hand, ZimmerTwins seems to offer more "fun" features. If you've got really young learners, who don't know much English, it might be a better choice.

What would you do with these sites?
Make animations, of course... But what you really want is for your learners to get some language learning and practice out of it -- and it's all too easy for the class to go silent (or real noisy!) while they fiddle with the animations but learn and practise zero English...

Providing them with a list of characters and features first and -- in pairs -- getting them to storyboard their animation first, before logging on, might be the best way to go about it.

When they do then get on-site, they will probably then have to discuss how they are going to adapt their storyboard to what the site can actually do -- but that can only be a good thing!

What's the point?
For your learners, it's a fun, motivating activity. For the teacher, it must produce that language learning and practice.

If it doesn't, should you be using this technology...?

Technical note
Note that you might need to upgrade your Flash Player (an easy download, provided you have "administrator permissions" on your PC/s, which you might not if you are in a school).

Halloween project

Halloween in IH... and probably celebrated in some way in many language classrooms

I came across this list of 100 scariest movies the other day and thought, "That might make a good blogging project".

A rough outline of a project

• In class, brainstorm, talk about "scariest movies", to see if we can produce a list of, say, 10 to 20
• See if we can agree on a rough ranking for them
• Turn on the PCs, and use a collaborative process writing approach to produce a plot summary plus what makes them really, really scary
• Go through various drafts, getting the other learners to commit on each others' work, and saving as Word documents
  
• Post the final version on a blog
• Get students to read the finished products, and use the "comments" feature to "vote" which they now think are most scary

Time sitting facing the PC screen...? I'd estimate it at under 30% of the total -- as it should be, I would suggest.

More resources
More Halloween lesson plans on the BBC, and on DevelopingTeacher.com.

More lesson plans for other days of the year.

What can you do with a blog (4)?

Example 4 is not in fact a blog -- it's an idea for a blog.

Someone on our trainee support group, teaching "a group of Brazilian teenagers here in the U.S. on a sort of pseudo educational vacation", asked the following question:

"This group is driving me insane! I've never come across a group of less behaved, unmotivated and basically spoiled brats in my life. (... ) most of these kids come from very wealthy families (...) and are generally accustomed to having everything done for them (...) How do you teach someone who not only hasn't a desire to learn but seems to refuse to?!"

My suggestion was:

"Being a total geek, I think I'd go for a geeky technological answer. I'd put them into smallish groups (3s?) and say they have 48 hours to produce the first issue of an online paper (I'm assuming their pseudo educational vacation in NY includes decent Internet access). They'd have to decide on sections, content, headlines, images -- the lot. And then produce it as a blog. Then they've got to produce the next issue 48 hours after that."

Questions as before: would you want to do such a project with your learners, why (not)? And would it work in this particular case, do you think?