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On 10 September 2007, the waiting will be over and English Online will be live. This is therefore the last edition of ELT Network through this website as we are moving onto English Online at the same time.
Remember that our ELT Network events at British Council, Supreme Court Road will still be running in Autumn 2007.
If you’re not sure what English Online is, then have a look at May's edition when we looked at some of the reasons behind creating this exciting new website.
In this month's lesson idea we provide an overview of how English Online will help you in the classroom. Read the lesson ideas below and use them to help you get the most out of English Online from 10 September.
Hint: When opening links, right click the link and select Open in New Window. This will enable you to continue reading the lesson ideas
Where on English Online: Teachers - Resources
What section: Flashcards
Level: Lower primary
Activity: Jobs Pelmanism
Jobs is one of the most common topics to occur in lower primary syllabi and what better way of reinforcing new vocabulary than through a game of pelmanism. English Online provides a wide array of specially prepared flashcards including a picture and a name on topics such as animals, the body, bugs and many others.
Click here to see an example page of flashcards.
Download the A4 pages (each page contains four job pictures and four titles). Get students to cut up the cards and lay them face down for a pelmanism game.
For those who don't know this game, students must take turns in turning two cards over. If they match (i.e. the word matches the picture), the student keeps the pair and has another go. If they are wrong, they must return the cards face down and the next student can have a go.
Where: Teachers – Resources
What: Photo Library
Level: Lower secondary
Activity: Using modal verbs to describe what signs mean.
Download images of signs and warnings from the English Online Photolibrary. Here are two images as an example:
Slippery surface warning
Parking restriction sign
Project the images onto the whiteboard/projector screen (if you don’t have access to a projector, print them out and hand them to the students).
Students make sentences, using various modal verbs, to describe the pictures.
For example:
You could slip and hurt yourself.
You shouldn’t run when you see this sign.
You can’t park here unless you are disabled.
Where: Teachers – Resources
What: Pronunciation Downloads
Level: Lower secondary
Activity: Introducing the phonemic script to students
It is highly useful if students can recognise the phonemic symbols used to represent the sounds of English. To help with this, download the posters of diphthongs from English Online (click below to see two examples)
Poster one: near
Poster two: say
For this activity, you need a lot of room for the students to move about.
Place these posters around the room and read out words containing the diphthong. For example; fear, may etc.
Students rush to the poster with the correct diphthong.
If you are short on space, you could hand out the diphthong posters to students, one each in a random order, and they must raise the correct page when they hear their sound.
Where: Teachers – Support
What: BritLit
Level: Upper primary
Activity: Exploiting fairy tales in the language classroom.
All around the world children love listening to and reading fairy tales. Whatever the reason, fairy tales provide both children and teachers with a familiar starting point from which to explore stories in a second language. This kit contains a variety of resources, from text and tasks to illustrations, flashcards and presentations, for you to download and use in your classroom.
The downloads are divided into five sections:-
•Activities - is a collection of materials related to the story
•Chants - is a collection of spoken drill type activities
•Flashcards - is to help you build up vocabulary and support understanding
•Play - helps you to use the materials to produce a short play
•Story - helps you to tell the story
This example download provides a chant based on the classic story of Little Red Riding Hood which helps students use imperatives, as well as understand the story, in a fun way. The download includes the full chant and teacher’s notes on how to exploit it.
Download it here.
Where: Teachers – Support
What: Games
Level: Any age
Activity: Lexical sets
This is a simple word game to start of finish a lesson. You can adapt it to any topic you’re doing or one you want to revise. A word snake is simply a chain of words where the following word starts with the last letter of the previous word. Here are a few examples.
Food
Spinach – ham – melon – nuts – sausage – egg – garlic – cheese…..
Animals
Giraffe – elephant – tiger – rhinoceros – spider – rat – turtle …
This game is harder than it looks so offer students lots of help and support, and maybe even a dictionary.
This is just one example of a quick game idea that can be found on English Online.
Where: Podcasts – Stories
What: Aesop’s Fables
Level: Upper secondary (advanced)
Activity: Text reconstruction, exploring poetic language and discussing morals
This lesson idea is based on a downloadable audio file. To download the file click here to go this month's Audio Bite.
Put the following morals up on the board: (remember the lesson is for advanced students)
- One good turn deserves another
- He who is once deceived is doubly cautious
- Contentment with our lot is an element of our happiness.
Ask students to discuss what these mean and see if they can come up with an example.
Play the first two fables of the podcast Aesop's Fables but pause before the narrator says the moral of the story. Ask students to decide which moral was matches the story.
Tell the students they are going to write the third remaining story – The Crab and the Fox (starting at 1:53).
Explain that the objective is not to reproduce the story word for word but rather write it to be accurate to the meaning. This is a good grammar task that forces students to think about sentence structure, verb form and meaning.
Tell the students not to attempt to write word for word but only write down the key words (played at normal speed this is all that is possible).
Once you have played the fable, ask students to compare the key words they wrote down. In small groups students must now reconstruct the story, making full sentences from their key words.
This stage will take about 20 minutes, once completed ask them to listen again and compare their versions. Is the meaning the same?
This fable has some complex language and advanced students may enjoy exploring the language.
Pelmanism is a game where students turn over cards to match a picture and the name of the picture.
Modal verbs: can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, (ought to, have to)
Diphthong: a two-sound vowel such as the sound in ‘cheer’
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