School movies

From this link you can access a collection of video recordings showing the work of students from Intxaurrondo Hegoa School. It includes presentations on different topics, sketches, and dubbed cartoons.

Activities for Easter

These are some resources related to Easter and spring:

A story:
The Great Egg Hunt

Handicrafts:
How to Make a Spring Hat

Handouts:
Easter Worksheets

Christmas activities

These are some online activities related to Christmas from the British Council's Learn English Kids site:
'Santa's Little Helper' story
Whose present?
Balloon Burst Christmas

Smories: new stories for children website offers recordings of stories and nursery rhymes told or sung by children (mainly girls!). These are several examples:

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

A Sailor Went To Sea

Can You Jump Like A Kangaroo?

Drawing like Picasso

Picassohead website allows to create portraits made up with a variety of features drawn in a 'picassian' style. All features can be altered with regard to size, colour and position. The tool can be used for oral dictation of instructions (e.g. make it larger/smaller, change into blue, drag it to the left...) when using the interactive whiteboard or as a pair activity when sharing a computer.

Reading about art

It's Fun to Read: Starfall Art Gallery web site presents six texts about different painters accompanied by pictures showing their artwork. Children can listen to the pronunciation of each word by clicking on them.

A couple of websites to learn and revise vocabulary

Learning Chocolate

Language Guide

Some online resources for young learners

In this blog post there are links to a set of Flash digital activities aimed at nursery or first levels of primary education.

An online activity to practise numeracy skills

Ann and Addem's Dartboard Game allows children to reinforce oral identification of numbers while practising mental arithmetic.

Voki

Voki is a simple online tool often used in the EFL primary classroom. It is based on the selection of an avatar which will utter any word or sentence (up to 60 seconds long if using the free option; 90 seconds are allowed to Classroom Voki users). It works as follows:

1. Select a character

2. Change the look
3. Add voice via microphone, text to speech or upload a file.
4. Choose a background
5. Click Publish to email or get code

The Voki web site also includes a set of teaching ideas.

Howjsay: a free online pronunciation dictionary

Howjsay provides a list of around 150,000 English words that can be heard in a clear standard pronunciation. Although it includes quite a lot of publicity, the search is easy and quick and the quality of the sound good enough to be used in the classroom.

When the result of a search appears in pink, the word can be heard once and again just by placing the mouse over it. Furthermore, it allows to list up to 15 entries by writing them separated by semicolons: a very useful option for practising aural recognition of close phonemes.

A TV programme aimed at learning English

Play TV shows are addressed to Catalan speaking children with the aim of helping them learn English.

Online games for young learners

Whiz Kid Games web site presents a set of nine interactive games that can be suitable for young learners or learner with special needs. The language is clear and the activities simple. They can be useful and fun especially when an interactive whiteboard is available.

Children's books to be read and listened to

MeeGenius website includes six free picture books that can be read and listened to.

Stories read by children

I learn from Teacher Training Videos about Smories, a collection of stories written for children and read out by children. Although many of them can be hard to to follow without pictures or text by young EFL students, some others can be really motivating.

An example:

Mommy! No More Singing!

Educational videos in English

NeoK12 website gives access to an organised collection of educational videos for Nursery, Primary and Secondary classes.

Videoteca educativa also presents a small selection of recommended videos to be used in the English classroom.