Thursday 28 January 2010

A good collection of links to websites related to primary school subjects

Coxhoe Primary School website displays selections of interesting websites related to a good number of curriculum subjects. Some resources can be useful if working through projects or in a CLIL approach.

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Language of the Month

Teachers and students at Newbury Park Primary School in Ilford carry out a project called 'Language of the Month’ to celebrate the different language backgrounds of its pupils. The scheme introduces everyone to some of the 40 languages spoken in the school community.

Tuesday 26 January 2010

Turtle, tortoise, or terrapin?

From Wikipedia:

"Although the word turtle is widely used to describe all members of the order Testudines, it is also common to see certain members described as terrapins, tortoises or sea turtles as well. Precisely how these alternative names are used, if at all, depends on the type of English being used.

  • British English normally describes these reptiles as turtles if they live in the sea; terrapins if they live in fresh or brackish water; or tortoises if they live on land. However, there are exceptions to this where American or Australian common names are in wide use, as with the Fly River turtle.
  • American English tends to use the word turtle for all freshwater species, as well as for certain land-dwelling species (e.g. box turtles). Oceanic species are usually referred to as sea turtles, and tortoise is restricted to members of the true tortoise family, Testudinidae. The name terrapin is typically reserved only for the brackish water diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin; the word terrapin being derived from the Algonquian word for this animal.[11]
  • Australian English uses turtle for both the marine and freshwater species but tortoise for the terrestrial species."

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Online stories

Els contes del Tom i la Laia is a collection of six online stories in English, which can be read and listened to. They are supplemented with activities.

Searching the web for particular types of documents

Juhuj is a search engine that allows refining our quest according to the type of file we are interested in. It can be useful when we are looking for presentations related to a topic, we prefer a Word document in order to edit it easily, etc.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Webquests

From this Matrix of Webquests we have access to some webquests in English that could give us ideas for designing projects.

Online dictionaries


Browsing through some classroom blogs related to EFL in Primary, in Blogging in Arteixo I've come across a reference to these two visual dictionaries:

- Sashi, a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images.
- Moving into English e-Glossary, a collection of terms with definitions, pictures and sentences managed by Hartcourtschool Publishers.

Moreover, the following resource is also mentioned: Howjsay, a practical pronouncing dictionary.

Some CLIL tasks designed by teacher trainee students

This wiki collects some tasks designed by teacher trainees as part of their course assignments.

Activities related to different subjects

This webpage from the Utah Education Network site gives access to several sets of activities, some of which could be useful when working through CLIL projects.

Activities and facts about bugs

Zoom in on True Bugs website includes a glossary, information and an online activity to classify some invertebrates.

Saturday 9 January 2010

The Animals Save the Planet

The Animals Save the Planet website presents several short cartoons where advice to take care of our environment is given. The shorts are funny and contain just a sentence at the end of each sketch. Further explanations about the issues mentioned in the sketches can be found on the How You Can Help section.