CLIL units

The Catalan Department of Education has fostered the creation of CLIL units throughout the last years. Resources related to this task carried out by primary and secondary teachers of English can be seen and downloaded from this link.

A CLIL project

Teachers from Escola Maria Osso in Sitges explain their CLIL project in primary education. They reinforce English teaching through maths and science. A video and specifications on the project can be accessed from here.

Webinar on eTwinning

'Abre tu aula con eTwinning' webinar, held on 18th October, was aimed at explaining what eTwinning is to teachers interested in getting to know this European project. The recording and slide presentation can be seen or downloaded from this webpage.

Hallowe'en pictures

Spooky Spot the Difference and Frankenstein colouring pictures from a couple of books published by Usborne can be used as a treat on these late days of October.

On autonomous learning

At the beginning of this month, from 4th to 6th October, the 11th Nordic Conference on Autonomous Learning was held in Donostia. Furthermore, a session addressed to teachers interested in getting to know more about the issue of learners' autonomy was organised on 3rd October.

Two well-known experts in this pedagogical approach, Leni Dam and David Little took part in the event. A selection of video and slide presentations by these two lectures can be accessed from the links below:

Leni Dam´s slides on types of activities and basic tools

David Little's slides on the principles of autonomous learning and the use of portfolios

An interview with Leni Dam

Parts of a lecture by Leni Dam: on the use of coursebooks 1 and 2

Parts of a lecture by David Little: on students' motivation and engagement 1 and 2

Story Monster

ACMI Story Monster website allows students to design monsters by choosing different features (eyes, wings, body size and colour...). Once the monster is created, the student uses arrow keys and the space bar of the keyboard in order to choose a verb and a noun. A short sentence is generated and uttered.

  

The activity can be useful to work on definitions, pronunciation, or as a start for creative writing.

Use of pictures in the English classroom

This article presents some ideas about the use of photos in the EFL classroom.

Some websites to find copyleft photos:

Flickrcc
10 banques d'images libres
INTEF: Banco de imágenes y sonidos

Pronunciation dictionaries

Howjsay website provides the sound of English words in quite a quick way. Users write the word they want to listen to into a box, click on 'submit' and choose it from a list.

Dictionarist also provides a good list of English words with their corresponding pronunciation and translations to other languages.

Macmillan Dictionary (monolingual) includes audio clips showing the British English spoken pronunciation of the requested word.

Questionnaire for seminar participants

You can access the form about your teaching situation and interests from this link.

Online program for creating activities based on texts

Textivate is an online tool that allows to create exercised based on text reconstruction. An explanation on its use can be read in this blog post.

This is a simple example:

Click below to access the activity. (Opens in a new window on touch devices.)

Click here to open the above activity in a new window.

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.