Week 6

This week in Language Skills through ICT, we were given a series of useful classroom tools that pertain to English speaking and writing. Many of these tools struck me as engaging and clever. Here are five that I especially liked:

The first is Spelling City. The site allows you to punch in your own vocabulary set, from which it produces a series of games that you can choose from. I tested it with a bunch of my own words. It was able to recognize all of them, and it even recognized words that have similar phonics but different spellings (e.g. know, note). This will be great to use with my weaker learners for when we have some extra time.

Another resource that I liked was IDebate. IDebate offers thousands of debate topics, each of which you can browse and read user-submitted arguments and counterarguments in favor and against. I think this is perfect for my students in sixth grade. Instead of organizing an activity based on vocab or grammar, I'll split the group into two teams, assigning each team to take a side on a particular topic. I'll provide each team with a brief article in support of their side. Both teams will get practice in reading and comprehending authentic articles, and using new information to formulate claims and arguments in English.


For younger students, this story generator from the British Council is very cool. The generator allows the user to choose a genre (fairy tale, sci-fi, or horror), and then it creates a plot based upon user-selected details. Similar to a Mad-Lib. It works students' knowledge of simple adjectives (big, strange), and present-tense verbs (fly, run).

My favorite among the tools is The Hemingway App. The Hemingway App interprets text and returns feedback to promote simplicity and brevity.

This tool is great for teachers who are weary of their own use of the English language, like me. Many teachers who develop lesson plans fail to test the user-friendliness of their lessons. The Hemingway App is a simple place to start.

Lastly, BBC Skilswise had an excellent selection of games and short videos for introducing spelling concepts, such as plural endings, prefixes and suffixes, and homophones. There was one memory game I liked especially, where the user must find matching homophones (e.g. pair/pear, rain/reign), etc.