Thanks to Rachel Smith (@lancslassrach) for sharing this wonderful site, where you can read books in a range of languages. There is also an ICDL app to make life even easier. http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
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Today my class had the pleasure of two Mrs Whiteheads in the room. I recorded my introduction using an app called explaineverything. It's really easy to use and allows you to save to movie roll. It was interesting to be able to prepare the next task and watch the students whilst the 'other me' introduced the new vocabulary. I had to chuckle when asked "Is this you miss or is it from YouTube?" Decide now for the iPad is a useful way to enter categories, vocabulary or questions. You then spin the wheel and see where it lands. The app is very easy to use and inputting the information takes no time at all. The app stores each set so you can prepare a few beforehand. This has many potential uses for the classroom and here are my suggestions so far. Fastest finger first I have two service bells in my classroom (I got them from the game Yes! No! which is relatively cheap). Input 12 items of vocab from the lesson into decide now. One player from each team comes to the front and has a bell. Spin the wheel, first to ding and translate when it stops wins a point. Telepathy All students choose one of the vocab items, write it on a scrap of paper and stand behind their desk. Spin the wheel and any who have the same as the wheel remain standing. The students still standing choose again. Repeat the process until you have a winner. Choose a card Create a set of flashcards to match the vocab on decide now and pin these around the room. Students choose which card to stand near and you spin the wheel. If the word they have chosen appears, then they are out. Running order For a different take on a carousel lesson where you have 5 or 6 tasks prepared for the lesson, you could enter the tasks on decide now! and spin the determine the order students work through them. Dictionary race To introduce new vocabulary, you could enter the new words on decide now!, spin the wheel and students have to race to find the meaning in the dictionary. The first to hold the meaning up on their whiteboard wins a point. The wheel may well land on a word which has already been looked up, so the first to shout out/re-write the meaning wins a point and so allowing for re-enforcement. Pictionary We play pictionary a lot in class with students competing to draw the item fastest on their mini whiteboard. I'm don't, however, always prepare the items well beforehand and so a spin on decide now! could determine what they have to draw. Talk for a minute Thanks to Amanda salt (@amandasalt) for this suggestion. Enter topic areas and students have to talk for a minute on the topic chosen. Strip bingo Strip bingo was suggested by someone on the TES collection of MFL games but apologies as I do not know their name. The idea of strip bingo is that students have 5 boxes in a line and fill each with an item of vocab. They have to tear off each box from the outside working inwards as the items get called. The winner is the person who gets their final box called first. This is more effective than normal bingo as it means the vocab has to be called more than once (a player might have a word on the outside and tear it off immediately but another player may not need the same word until their last square). Decide now! would be a good way to select the vocabulary. Thanks to our fab technicians, I am now able to project my iPad in my room which opens up a new range of ways I can use it with my classes. Here are some of my favourite apps so far for use in the classroom. Tellagami is a great app for the iPad. You can create a short story (up to 30 seconds of speech) and easily share or save. These are my favourite iPad apps so far. They can all be used by the teacher as part of lesson planning. If your school offers students access to iPads then, more importantly, these all allow students to be creative in their learning. I used a lovely app called TagCloud to create the image. It offers a range of styles and backgrounds and is very simple to export. I used a TagCloud creation with year 9 as a starter. I included a range of key vocabulary - including cognates and some unseen words. Students did the task as a vocab trading activity - they circled the ones they knew for 2 minutes and then had two minutes to trade vocabulary with others around the room. They were only allowed to offer the mearning of a word if someone else had one they didn't know to offer in return. It worked really well although one student did not want to write on her tagCloud as it was "too pretty"
You can use wordfoto to write over images. I made a vocabulary trail using the app for my year 7 class to discover around the room.
A guide for Key Stage 4 students with the best (and mainly free) apps to help with their revision. DOWNLOAD |
Karen WhiteheadI have been teaching languages for 13 years. I enjoy finding and developing new ways to engage students with their learning. This page is designed for sharing anything and everything that may be of use to others. Enjoy! Categories
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November 2014
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