The Alphabet Game

These are some samples of 'The Alphabet Game' ('Pasapalabra') generated by using GenMagic software.

VOCABULARY 1  and OUR VOCABULARY. A couple of games aimed at revising basic vocabulary.

CHRISTMASTIME.  Vocabulary related to Christmas and winter.

"Our School News Magazine" eTwinning project

This post tells us about a project carried out out by three primary schools. Students from the three countries work together on the creation of a school magazine. Each issue includes different types of contents: prresentations, stories, riddles...

This is an example:

Power Point Games

A good number of resources aimed at developing academic vocabulary at school can be found from this link (type ppt in the search box). These materials include some blank templates of  Power Point Games that can be completed by teachers of different levels and subject matter.

These are a couple of examples:

Holiday Squares is a version of Noughts and Crosses. It can be played with the whole class divided in two teams or in small groups of four (a pair of students make up a team), for instance. Older students could also generate their own games for the rest of the class.

Password game. A students stands on the front of the classroom with his or her back to the interactive board. The class gives the student clues to the vocabulary word on the screen as a clock keeps time. The student tries to guess the word before the buzzer sounds.

Story Maker

Story Maker is a simple activity that allows students to choose several items in a story. It makes three different types of story: fairy stories, horror stories and science-fiction.

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

From Rags to Riches

From Quia-Shared Activities web page we can access a good number of interactive activities created by teachers. Criteria for searching them include type of activity, subject or area of interest and levels. If we choose 'From Rag to Riches' and 'ESL-English as a second language' we can find games such as the following:

- 'a, an, or nothing'
- 'Apartments and furniture'
- 'To be: present tense'
- 'Family words'
- 'Where questions'

Templates and guidelines to create games based on 'Who wants to be a millionaire?" TV contest can be found here.

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?

Draw a Stickman

A couple of interactive cartoon stories can be tried on the website of Draw a Stickman app. The layout is simple and attractive and the language of the instructions can be useful for reading and vocabulary work on the interactive whiteboard.

Reading: All About Me

It's Fun to Read: All About Me activity allows children to choose the features of a character that would represent them, a pet, a bedroom, and a toy. They can also work on vocabulary related to the house.

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.

Interactive whiteboard resources: Topmarks

Topmarks Education website includes a selection of resources suitable for using them on an interactive whiteboard. Although it is addressed to native speakers of English, many activities can be useful in the EFL primary classroom.

Songs and rhymes for very young learners

Muffinsongs video channel collects a good number of children's songs and nursery to sing along.

Another collection of similar songs -this time in an interactive Java format- can be accessed from this blog.

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.

Some resources for promoting early reading skills

Reading is Fundamental web site includes a set of resources (readings, games, songs, colouring images...) aimed at pre-school children. Some of them can be also useful in the primary EFL classroom. These are a couple of examples:

Caterpillar, Caterpillar song.

House for Sale story.

Language activities related to football

Soccerlingua presents a set of five games aimed at practising some basic vocabulary and structures through games based on football.

Some nursery rhymes

This website includes links to a set of traditional nursery rhymes displayed in sequences of four pictures that can be used as a poster on the interactive whiteboard (and listen to or read along a particular rhyme) or can be printed out (and make booklets, reading cards...)

Storybird

Storybird allows the user to choose from a set of pictures drawn by a professional artist in order to create thir own stories. It somehow reverses the process of visual storytelling, i.e. from words to pictures, and requests the creator of a new story to start with the image and "unlock" the story inside.

This video explains the process

A couple of examples of books created by Storybird users:

Two Ways on Storybird
Colors Of The Rainbow on Storybird

Eurolib

"The European Children’s Travelling Language Library, is a European Union funded project. It is targeted at motivating children that have recently started to learn a foreign language to:

• Exposure them to the rich heritage of European languages and cultures
• Be motivated to learn languages
• Build a love of reading as the best form of autonomous lifelong learning
• Reinforce emerging literacy.

(...) illustrated children's books in six European languages will travel from school to school across Europe. Each school has the library for a period and has to carry out a number of educational and collaborative activities (...) The target group for the project is students in their first year of learning a foreign language (...) Initially the libraries will be available in Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK and later in other countries".

Further information

Build Your Wild Self: a tool to create fantastic characters

Build Your Wild Self allows the creation of fantastic characters made up of a variety of parts of animal or human bodies. It can be useful for working on descriptions.