Erin Bouma's Recommended
WEB FINDS: ACTIVITIES AND GAMES
Gamequarium is a portal to online, educational, interactive games and learning activities. Gamequarium provides a doorway for those who are seeking interactive, instructional online resources. The site is created/maintained by educator Diana Dell whose mission is to organize the internet for teachers, parents and students.
http://www.quia.com/trial/PHONICS28.html
With Quia you can create online learning games, activities, and quizzes customized to your classes. It provides a wide variety of educational services, including:
– Easy templates for 16 online activities
– A collection of online activities /quizzes
– Tools for creating quizzes – 8 question types
– Automatic quiz grading, administrative and reporting tools.
All features are intuitive and learn-as-you-go. The “create-your-own” concept gives you the ability to create educational software online, built around your course materials and available over the Web.
SqoolTube offers teachers access to free educational videos. With almost 200 book related videos (including Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein) and videos that focus on reading, comprehension, and phonics (action, funky and animal alphabets), not to mention history, music and science, you may find something that you’d like to use.
ESL Games
www.the-bus-stop.net/games.html
McMillian-Heiniman site with both interactive and worksheet activities and separate teacher’s notes. A variety of activities: describing, directions, grammar, communications, reading, writing.
www.eslkidstuff.com/Classroomgamesframe.htm
A selection of over 100 classroom games from teachers are described, mostly for elementary level. A broad range of content, lots of movement, variety and excitement for practicing skills, answering questions.
Game ideas listed alphabetically. Counting, grammar, action, alphabet, traditional, blackboard, etc. You can also add your own games.
www.shaneycrawford.com/Main/Games
187 collected classroom games by a teacher working in Japan. For differing levels: paper and pencil, blackboard, flashcard, circle, dramatics, board and card games. Four Alphabet games, 4 numbers games, 4 translation games and 3 interview activities. Simple instructions for each.
www.gradebook.org/Educational%20Games.htm
Internet sites listed for elementary educational games – indoor, outdoor, language, online, and more.
http://iteslj.org/c/games.html
132 classroom games submitted to Internet TESL Journal, (1998–2005) from traditional to original. Levels listed but many are any level; both paper and pencil and active games, many for teams or pairs.
http://www.esl-lounge.com/board_games.shtml
A great site if you like or want to use board games in the Classroom. There are printout gameboard materials for free available to download and use, for instance a game using “conditionals,” as well as a couple of blank master formats for you to enter the material to be used. Some teacher notes are listed to guide the beginner on games.
Comics Sites
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/How-to-Play/Educators
Make Beliefs Comix offers teachers 21 creative ways to use this site in the classroom where students design their own comics to introduce themselves, practice new vocabulary in context, create storyboards about a book/original story, practice language structure in thought balloons, etc. Also YouTube video of a N.Y. ESOL teacher using Comix in the classroom. Step-by-step comic strip-making and writing prompts.
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic
Interactive “Comic Creator”. You title your cartoon and select 1, 2, 3 or 6 panels, then begin filling them with characters, props and speech bubbles. Each frame can also have a written caption added. Simple content but engaging. Allows creator to put a story together and print it out.