Interactive ELL Practice: Great for Vocab on the Promethean Board!

Learning Chocolate is a wonderful resource for teachers who teach English as a Second Language Learners or any of the primary grades and want to reinforce basic vocabulary. If you have a Promethean board or an ActivSlate in your room, even better. These activites work well on the board AND you do not have to make anything! First, choose a category of basic vocabulary words. I chose "Animals 2" for the example below. Then you have a chance to review the vocabulary words: view a photos of the words, see them written out, and hear them pronounced (click on sound icon).


Then move on to matching. Click and drag the vocabulary word from the bank below and drag it into the box next to the matching photo. The best part?? The site is SELF-CHECKING! Just click the "complete" button and it will mark your work with red Xs or green check marks.

Next, another matching activity appears. But this time you click the sound icon from the bottom of the page, listen to the word, and drag it to the matching picture. Click "complete" to check your work.

Then students have a chance to type in the vocabulary word into the matching field under the photo. Click "complete" to check your work.

Next is the dictation section. Click the sound icon. Listen to the word pronounced. Then type the word into the field. Click "complete" to check your work.

There are many different categories of words on the site for teachers to use immediately in their classes. Don't reinvent the wheel. Check Learning Chocolate first!

Word Magnets: Great for Promethean Board Vocab Activities!

Word Magnets is a free resource where you can type in words and then move them around the page against different background templates. You can use this idea to create phonics activities, vocabulary and sight word practice, timelines, Venn Diagrams and more! When you get to the home page, click the big arrow at the bottom that says, "Use the resource". On the next screen where it advertises the upgrading to Word Magnets 2, wiggle your mouse and another arrow will appear that says, "Next". Finally, you will arrive at a text box where you can type or paste in a list of words that you want to move around the screen. Then click "next". In the example below, you can see I made a simple sorting activity with long vowel words and short vowel words.

Here I made a sorting activity that would be appropriate for ELL or primary kids learning sight words. If you click on a color before you choose a word, the word will change to that color. Now you can visually differentiate words as well. There are several different template backgrounds to choose from: Venn Diagram, Webs, Timelines, Ordering, etc. Check it out!

Conjugation.com - Perfect for ELL Classrooms

Here is another great resource for ELL or ESL teachers. As anyone might know, conjugating verbs can be difficult when learning languages, especially in the English language. Conjugation.com is a website that will conjugate verbs in English for ELL learners. Type in your verb, and press "Conjugate". You will see a screen similar to the one below. Notice the tabs along the top of the screen. You can see the affirmative, negative, interrogative, definition, and examples of the verb.

For the tech geeks out there, you can also embed Conjugate.com into your teacher website or blog so you can have this feature built into your site! Cool! Thanks, Conjugate.com!

Quick Translator Helpful for ELL Teachers

Quick Translation is a site that teachers with ELL students will find helpful, I'm sure. Copy and paste (or type) in the words that you want translated and then simply pull down the window to choose what language to auto detect. For example, if you wanted to paste in Spanish text, choose to have the site auto detect "Auto Detect Spanish to English". The site will then translate for you and check it against Google and Microsoft Translator. Two heads are better than one!

Forvo.com: All the World's Words - Pronounced!

Forvo.com is a great resource for foreign language and ELL teachers. Choose your language. Type in the word you want to hear pronounced, and the site will read it to you. I'm not talking about one of those robotic voices that doesn't sound anything like a human either. Forvo.com has realistic, human voices! Think of how this can be beneficial to ELL students as they try to learn pronunciation!

See and Spell: Practice Vocab or Spelling!

Remember the old See and Say toy from years ago? Now there is a website called Spin and Spell based on the same idea, but this time children practice their vocuabulary or their spelling online! (There is no string or cord to pull to make this work! Ha!)

Basically, you start off by choosing a category of words: animals, transportation, food, clothing, and home. The virtual board will populate with pictures. Students click the picture to make their choice, and then "spell" the word they chose clicking the letters on the see and spell wheel. When they are finished, they can check their work.

If you're students are not ready to spell yet, use it to teach vocabulary! Click the picture, and then instead of spelling it, choose 'Show me the word". The picture will appear with the corresponding vocabulary word.

This is a wonderful site to use with ELL students or primary students, depending on what your focus is. Enjoy!

Behold: The LiveScribe Pen has Educational Applications

I recently received a LiveScribe pen for demo through work. Shortly after, the vendor came out to show how this pen could be used on a basic level, and how it could integrate into a classroom setting.

What is a Livescribe pen? The pen contains a small camera to record your movements as you write on special dot paper. The dots are almost invisible to the naked eye. You can purchase notebooks, notepads, and journals for your pen, as long as you don't duplicate the notebooks. For example, if you already bought and used "notebook one", don't purchase another "notebook one" unless you want to overwrite all of your previous work. Each notepad has different dot paper that the camera records. You can also print out extra dot paper from the LiveScribe website if you like. Within the dot paper, there are small controls that are embedded into the page: most notably: record and stop.

This is how it works:

1. Click record on your page during a lecture or presentation.
2. Start using your pen and notebook to write notes during the lecture
3. Click stop when you are finished.
4. If you "tap" any of the words you wrote during the lecture, you will hear what was being said in the room at that point in your notes.

No - the pen does not "speak" your written notes. It is not text-to-speech. No - the pen does not turn your messy handwriting into digital print (handwriting recognition). But imagine - you don't have to worry about writing EVERYTHING down during lectures anymore! For example, what if you decided just to write the main ideas and record the rest of the "details" using the pen? It would save your fingers from endless scribbling during class, and you will have captured everything you need to study. Upload your audio and notes to your computer so you can play the audio back on the computer instead of just through earbuds. Click a button to upload these notes online, get a URL to your recorded notes, and share your notes with colleagues, friends, or guests.

So how could this be used in the classroom? Think of all of the ways this pen could be used in the primary classroom.

1. Talking Books: Make your own living books! Glue a small piece of dot paper on a story book, draw a dot on the page as you record your voice reading the text on the page, and voila! Now students who have difficulty reading can listen to the book and follow along without an assistant.
2. Talking Word Walls: Ever have kids write the wrong word down even if they used your word wall as reference? Now record your voice saying the word on the bulletin board. When kids click the word, they will hear the word being read out loud. It takes the guesswork out of "which word do I need?
3. Singing Notebook: embed songs all in once place - in your notebook
4. Running Records: Record kids reading for fluency for playback for parent conferences or so you can code the passage more accurately later in the day.
5. ELL Vocab: Do you teach English as a Second Language students? Do you have objects labeled all over the room? Use the pen to record your voice on each label, so kids can hear the word instead of just see the word. Great for pronunciation practice!
6. Make up spelling tests: Absent kids take a spelling test with the pen, instead of you.

Do you want to see more ideas? Check out this wiki for amazing screencasts and ideas.

Talking Pets Fun For ESL Learners

Talking Pets is a site I came across today that allows you to select a pet (cat or dog) and make it talk by selecting a pre-recorded message or a message that you type on your own. Then you can email your talking pets to all of your friends. This site could provide incentive for beginning ESL learners to want to write in English so they can hear it spoken back to them. It can’t get any more fun than a talking pet reading your writing back to you!