To practice English in a
fun way with younger students
In our school we
have a license with www.skolplus.se.
If you don’t have a license only some of the practices are open for
you, but you can buy a prescription for 320 Swedish kronor if you are
a privatperson and a bit more if you want to buy for the school (no
exact prise a given at the webpage, but it starts at a minimum of
1400 kronor.)
This is a Swedish
website filled with funny practice for the younger and the older
pupils. Most of the tasks are in Swedish
and you can practice for example mathematics, Swedish and geography.
There are three very
good tasks to practice English, two of whom my pupils are very found
of.
The first task is ”Build a sentence”. The same task is available in Swedish so my pupils knows how to do. They learn the words and the way to make a sentence very quick.
Here is a guide for the
pupils.
How to do:
First, read the
words and ask if there anything that you don’t understand.
Secondly, drag the
words to the lines in the right order, don’t forget the dot or the
question mark. Then press done.
If you did it right
you will now se the sentence that you
wrote. (The bird and the cow are acctually jumping on the screen.)
Even if the pupils
don’t know every word when they start they will try and try and
after a while they will recognize most of the words.
For me as a teacher
I often use the tasks at my cleverboard when I have the class at my
carpet in front of me, maybe if we have five minutes to kill, while
we are waiting for the dinner to get ready. Together we read the
words and make sentences. Sometimes we talk about the different part
of the speech, it’s easy to see since they are marked in different
colours.
We also use “Guess
the word!”, a form of hang man. You can choose short words
and longer words. For my second graders the short words are perfect.
This is tasks that we do at least three times a week, maybe ten
minutes at a time. We try to say the letters in English and guess the
words in English even though it can be hard. The pupils thinks it
very exciting to see if he is going to fly or crash and the whole
class is very engaged.
The practices works excellent for working in pairs.
In the future I hope the
makers come up with more English practices.
This was my contribution
to the blog, I hope you will find some new things to try in your
classroom.
Yours, Susanne Bernlind
(All the pictures from www.skolplus.se)
Hello Susanne!
ReplyDeleteI used Skolplus for a couple of years ago. The pupils liked it as much as I did.
I haven't used since they started to charge for it. Many of the families in my class have bought the prescription.
/Pernilla L
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Susanne
ReplyDeleteThis website sounds like a lot of fun for your pupils. It works well, because in the website they are training to read the English words and to assemble a meaning in correct English. The pupils can do that in a small group of two or even alone, depending on how old the students are and how good their English is of course. You write about how your pupils sometimes are guessing the words if they don't quite understand "they try and try" and in the end they get the whole meaning right. You can as a teacher see the golden opportunity and write down the words that your pupils are insecure about and talk about them in a group or write down the words in different sentences so they can get a better grasp on it in a whole.
My question to you is; how old are your pupils? In which grade are you working in?
Otherwise, good job and good luck!
Ines
Hello Susanne!
ReplyDeleteLooks like a good page. I haven´t used it before, but have tried it now after you wrote about it. Will try it more and see in what ways it can be used in our teaching and if it might be worth to subscribe. /Andreas
Hi Susanne,
ReplyDeleteYou have found a fun website to work with. The English exercises are colourful and they are easy and fun for the students to work with. Using a cleverboard as you have done, seams like a good idea. The students can listen and learn from each other and you, as the teacher, can help the students with pronunciation and building correct sentences. A teacher that has access to tablets or computers can let students work in smaller groups or pairs when working with the exercises. Is there just one set of words to use for “build a sentence” or are there different words every time you start it? My limited experience on these kind of exercises is that they lack of variety. The website seams to focus on math because of the amount of exercises in the subject. But as you mention, it can be used in many subjects. Have you any experience of how well it works in other subjects then in English?
Thank you for sharing your experience working with www.skolplus.se.
/Malin Holmén
We use this resource at times in my förskoleklass and as you say it is very much appreciated by the students. I have not tried this activity in either Swedish or in English, but will definitely try it with the students that I have who can read. We have worked a lot with proper sentence building and I think they would get the hang of it pretty quickly. It sounds like a great activity for collaboration in pairs or in groups.
ReplyDeleteThank you for a great review and a great suggestion!
Anna