Infonews n°337 from 30/08/2008
An original way to start
A traditional way to start
Tips and ideas to take a good start
Primary School : Level A1
Lower secondary school, level A2
Upper secondary school : level B1 and above
OpenEnglishWeb
In Le Café pédagogique, I updated the “back to
school” page, with lots of suggestions for the
first day of school. Since the page will be
online only on Monday, I copy and translate here
the “back to school” part, but you will also find
on this page useful sites of reference (online on September 1st, in French)
http://www.cafepedagogique.net/lesdossiers/Pages/rentree08_anglais_Sommaire.aspx
You can also find precious “back to school”
resources on Michèle Henry’s website in Nancy-Metz :
http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/backtoschool2.htm
Here are over 50 addresses to find an original or
a traditional activity for the first day of
school. Then there are tips and advice for new
teachers, that can also be useful to us all,
followed by activities ordered by level, from A1
in primary school to B2 in secondary school. The
essential is to start the school year with an
open mind, take some distance from the artificial
methods and tricks that turn your students into
trained pets, and establish in the class an
atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, where
everyone will collaborate to the common task with
his/her own capacities and get something from it
(including the teacher who can also learn from the students!).
An original way to start
The following long list of "back to school" sites
will allow you to choose the activities that will suit you best on Monday to:
- allow the students to get to know you and/or
the other students through "ice-breakers", or
organise communicative activities based on
personal information. English speakers like this
way of getting to know each other, but some
French people find it too inquisitive. If you are
a new teacher, remember that you don’t have to
answer all questions and avoid saying that you
have no experience or giving your home address…
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson019.shtml
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/breakice.htm
http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Ice:Breakers
- invite them to write a "friendship cinquain"
(a short poem with 5 verses) introducing another
student that they have interviewed in English:
here is the worksheet with the questions.
http://home.att.net/~teaching/langarts/friendsh.pdf
- play "Truth or Lies" : each student writes
three sentences saying something special or
surprising about himself, with only one true
statement and two false. The others must guess
which one is true. It is an opportunity to use
questions in an authentic context, make
statistics and graphs, and help students know
each other. What is interesting there is that
each student will give a positive image of him/herself.
http://www.eslhq.com/forums/esl-forums/esl-games-activities/first-day-activities-318/2/
- ask your students to make self portraits or
booklets about themselves presenting what they
like, where they live, their family, their
experiences, etc. You can give them an example
through a montage about yourself (a slide show or
a collage of pictures and words) and ask them to
comment on it. But be careful about questions
about the family or the family tree which can be
unsettling for students with a complex personal history or family problems.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/books/backtoschool/
- organise a "get-to-know-you scavenger hunt":
a variation of the ice-breakers, with printable student activity pages:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/backtoschool/scavengerhunt/
- create a dynamic around a class project that
can last a month or a year, but give the students
a goal to achieve and the opportunity for a long
term involvement. This can be researching
information (through a webquest or something
else), creating (a poster presentation, an
exhibition or a webpage), or acting (working with
correspondents, adopting a pet virtually, doing
something to improve or protect the environment,
presenting a cultural fact or a monument, etc.).
eTwinning is the best place to find a project or
partners and to advertise for your project and find classes to work with you.
http://www.etwinning.net
A traditional way to start
You can start with a text like this "back to
school" , but avoid giving a positionment test on
the first day : allow some time for the students
to feel comfortable again with English : laying
them a trap on the first day is not fair!
Back to school in the world (B1)
Texts in which students from all over the world
describe their back to school spirit. You can
assign a different country to groups of students
who will report it to the class, and you can
encourage them to find what is common to several
students and also themselves. This can lead to a
"back to school" discussion in class, during
which students can talk about their fear and
expectations for the coming school year.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0904/p13s1-lekt.html
Back to school audio and video files
From ESL lab, a dialogue about school supplies,
level A2 and above (including high tech stuff like a palm pilot…)
http://www.esl-lab.com/supplies/suppliesrd1.htm
*** Discover the Pulse Smart pen: a video and a
site about a pen that records what is said as you
write. Intriguing, not useful, but it will make
your students talk and provide you with the
opportunity to review school supplies and then go
on to classroom English and/or discuss and write
together a good behaviour chart.
http://www.livescribe.com/ http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080818006232&newsLang=en
another video about back to school new gadgets and gismo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJUnS2Uxf8Q
recommendations for parents of pre-teens that can
be discussed with students (with cultural elements like locker)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaC-vcncStI&feature=related
Tips and ideas to take a good start
Advice for students teachers and beginners, with
concrete suggestions that can really help.
http://www.ac-versailles.fr/pedagogi/anglais/formation/backtoschool/
27 tips to help a new teacher start the year.
http://www.vtnea.org/ti-1.htm
10 tips for new teachers.
http://www.teachersfirst.com/tenpoints.shtml
Teachers’ Dos and don'ts (for what to do and avoid doing in class).
http://www.adprima.com/managemistakes.htm
Guide for beginner teachers (and not so new
too!): how to get organised, how to react, use
humor, etc. Very comprehensive site with interesting suggestions of activities.
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr264.shtml
How an American primary school teacher starts the year : inspiring !
http://www.fvsd.ab.ca/stm/classroom_management_tips_and_be.htm#beginning of the year
First day activities : interesting suggestions to take a good start.
http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3340
http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/classmanagement/firstday.html
Teaching Heart (tips, lessons, poems, games).
http://www.teachingheart.net/backtoschool2.html
Abcteach (worksheets for activities for all
levels, like class survey, I am a star, my goals, poems)
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/theme_units/back_to_school/
First School (worksheets for Preschool)
http://www.first-school.ws/theme/h_back_to_school.htm
About.com (lots of links with ideas to plan your
courses and suggestions to manage your classes
and organise activities, like "brain friendly" or
"getting to know your classmates")
http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aabackschool_teacher.htm
A Canadian website designed for teachers, with theory and concrete tips.
http://www.2learn.ca/mapset/Enjoy/back2School04/enjoyschoolfinal.html
and an interesting page about how to build a project
http://www.2learn.ca/Projects/ProjectCentre/projintro.html
Eduhound : a site of links to sites of teaching
tips and activities. Rich and varied.
http://www.eduhound.com/cat.cfm?subj=Back-to-School
Primary School : Level A1
For kindergarten and beginning of primary school
: coloring pages, handicrafts, etc.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/school/
Suggestions of activities, ideas to organise the
classroom and the lessons, games, songs and much more…
http://www.proteacher.com/030005.shtml
http://atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Back_to_School/
http://www.bry-backmanor.org/backtoschool.html
http://www.kinderkorner.com/back.html
Poems and songs sung to famous tunes, but no sound.
http://www.preschooleducation.com/sback.shtml
http://www.songs4teachers.com/backtoschool.htm
A site of labels, lists and plannings to print
from which you can teach the days of the week,
the basic school supplies, the chores or the
school schedule with a « to do » list. With those
personalised plannings, the students will make
theirs the vocabulary because it regards their
own specificities and activities. You can use
those documents to teach the vocabulary on
levelA1 and to reactivate it on level A2 and then
go further by asking them to produce more complex sentences.
http://www.billybear4kids.com/graduation/back2school.html
This site teachers students in English how to
cover a book. This activity is really useful
because most students don’t know how to cover a
book properly, and doing it in English make this
boring activity seem new and fun…and they will use English naturally!
http://www.billybear4kids.com/graduation/back-to-school/book/cover.html
Lower secondary school, level A2
Ideas for activities, puzzle and so on…
http://www.theteacherscorner.net/seasonal/back-to-school/
http://www.childfun.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=166
http://www.caslt.org/research/backtoschool.htm
Suggestions that you can adapt to your class :
like « me in a bag » or « school scavenger hunt »
where students discover their new school on their
own, looking for the required landmarks and items
to find. A new way to make them discover what
they can find in the library or how to go to the
canteen : and in the following lesson, they will
ask each other questions about how to get around
in the school and where they found such and such
information, and they will use the vocabulary to
give directions and describe locations.
http://www.yesiteach.org/back.htm
School wacky tales : field trip tale. Students
have to suggest words in the required grammatical
forms, and the machine produces automatically a
wacky text. This is fun, and you can then ask
them to find the word that would make the text «
normal ». Meanwhile, they will review the
organisation of the words in a sentence and what
words belong to the same category.
http://www.eduplace.com/tales/content/wwt_008.html
various activities for secondary school : word
scramble, stories about yourself, plan ahead,
bring your own inner inventor, one to one,
getting to know you, what I really like, etc.
http://www.eduplace.com/monthlytheme/august/school.html
Upper secondary school : level B1 and above
Various unusual activities
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/BeginSchool.htm
See especially this "welcome to school letter”
loaded with bad pieces of advice that students
have to spot and correct. This activity can lead
to a review of « classroom English » and to
building together a catalogue of good behaviour in class.
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/SSLAOGremlinsGoToSchool-SchoolLifeIdea56.htm
For a more psychological approach, here are tips
and activities for all levels to create a « class
community » or « promote positive behaviour »,
but also to learn how to react non-violently to
bullying and deal with disruptive behaviours. You
can use those pages as teachers’ recommendations
or study them in class to reflect about school
behaviour and even write a guide for other students.
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/curriculum/backtoschool.html
Preparing to study : this iste invites students
to review their working environement at home and
make sure it is appropriate, but beware of
discrimination : this site is aiming at
priviledged students, sufficiently well off to
have all a good place to work at home, and all
the required equipment. If yours are not this
type, just forget about this activity !
http://www.how-to-study.com/preparing-to-study.htm
10 ways to motivate your child to learn : read
this page with your students and invite them to
comment. This will lead them to talk about their
motivation, how they deal with school work and
what are their relations with their parents
regarding work. But be careful because some
students may consider this activity as
inquisitive. Consider doing it once a trusting
relation has being installed between the teacher
and the students, and also between the students themselves.
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1304
Here are the back-to-school recommendations from
the national education board in the USA:
statistics about schools, information for
teachers and parents, about financial aids,
school and internet safety. A rich and varied
site that you can encourage students of human
sciences and economics (ES) level B1+ or B2 to
use to discover information that they can later
report to the class and debate, comparing those
information to what happens in France.
http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Back_to_School.shtml#vgn-for-educators-vgn
Tools for school : This site is appropriate for
secondary school students level B1+ and B2. It’s
a very comprehensive site, meant as a homework
helper for US students. You find language art,
literature, biographies, measures and converters,
encyclopedias, history, geography, quizzes,
sciences, physics, chemistry, math, and even some
educational games such as a hangman), Like the
previous site, you can encourage students to
browse through and choose topics they like, then
produce speeches and interactions (PPC or PPI :
prise de parole en continue ou en interaction,
inter-questionnements) to inform the class about
their findings, comment the resource and discuss
how it can be used by them as a study helper.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/01school1.html
BBC Learning English now also features a site for
teachers where you can download worksheets and
activities to use the resources of the site in
class. Note also the "working abroad" section,
with quizzes, worksheets, audio files and
transcripts, texts, grammar, pronunciation,
crosswords, etc. A lot of resources and
activities excellent for STG et BTS students.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/teachingenglish/index.shtml
OpenEnglishWeb
Sur les listes de professeurs d'anglais e-teach
et eTeachNet, des collègues avaient souhaité la
création d'un espace sur Internet dans lequel ils
pourraient mettre au service de la communauté
leurs idées, préparations, liens, plans de cours, séquences, pratiques TICE...
Un petit groupe de fervents adeptes du libre l'a
fait, et a créé un espace où chacun pourra
déposer ses créations (originales), échanger des
documents et même rédiger des documents à plusieurs. Les voici:
http://www.openenglishweb.org/spip.php?page=contributeurs
Ils se sont regroupés pour fonder l'association
Open English Web (Association loi 1901) qui
s’adresse aux enseignants d’anglais et aux
apprenants en mettant à disposition de tous, sans
but lucratif, et avec une philosophie de service
public, des ressources pédagogiques et des outils
destinés à l’enseignement ou à l’apprentissage de
l’anglais langue étrangère via l’Internet ou d’autres supports.
Elle a pour objectifs :
de favoriser le travail collaboratif entre collègues,
d’accueillir sur son site des ressources
destinées à l’enseignement de l’anglais ;
d’utiliser la licence Creative Commons telle
qu’elle est définie dans la Charte et de
promouvoir les formats libres et ouverts ;
de promouvoir l’utilisation des T.I.C.E. comme
outil de travail et d’apprentissage.
Consulter la charte, puis allez visitez le site,
qui propose déjà des contributions très utiles,
comme de nombreux fichiers audios libres de droits.
Les membres de l'association seront aussi
naturellement très heureux de voir leur bébé
grandir, nourri par les contributions des
collègues. Et ils espèrent que cet espace
permettra de concevoir tous ensemble des supports et des outils utiles à tous.
Le site :
http://www.openenglishweb.org/
Pour contacter l’association : contact@openenglishweb.org
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