Anglomaniacy
Blog post about http://www.anglomaniacy.pl/index.html
I work at a school in Norrköping with children that are 7 to 12 years. I mostly teach music but I also help my colleagues, which do not work full time, with class teaching. Since the English lessons are not so frequently in the earlier years I often get the assignment to teach English.
To make the lesson fun and interesting for the pupils I often include things from the internet. We have “smartboards” in every classroom at my school so it is easy to show the pupils sites that I find on the net.
Since I have started this course I have been more effective in my search for new things at the internet.
I found this site a few weeks ago. I think it is a site from Poland
Anyway...it is a nice site and I like it a lot. You do not have to be a member and it is free to use. It is easy to navigate thru all the different kind of things to do. You can “work” with the site with the whole class if you have a “smartboard” or a projector for your computer. The pupils can also easily work by themselves since the site is very easy to manage. You can try the tasks as many times as you wish. The sound is good and the pictures are nice. You are free to download all the print outs on the site if you are just going to use them for your class or for personal use.
I first found the songs and they are magnificent. The songs are traditional English songs and they are just perfect for young children to sing even if their English is not so good yet. The sound is great and the kids and the adults that are singing sounds very good. You can print out the lyrics if you want and the pictures are nice and the text is very clear. There is also a little bit of information about every song. There are also a lot of suggestions of other web pages for other songs. They are added by Google.
When you start at the homepage there are a lot of different things to do. The vocabulary page has many different topics where the pupils can learn many different words. There are some tasks where the pupils can practice to imitate the words. The voice pronounces the words clear and it is easy to hear what she says.
There are a few different kinds of practice tasks, like; memory, hangman game and try to spell the words. They are easy to follow.
There are also two testing tasks. The first one is to mark the right word that fits to the picture. You have one chance to pick the right word and you will found out immediately is you have made the right choice. Then you proceed with the next word. The other test is a vocabulary quiz where you have to read a sentence to make the right guess.
A last you can print out working sheets that are connected to the topic. The working sheets are a little bit like “workbook” but some are fun and challenging and the pictures are very nice.
All the different topics contain all the tasks so there is no chance that the pupils or you will be out of lessons.
There are more things to do, like the grammar lessons. These lessons are for a little bit older children since they practice just grammar, you must know how to read, you have to make many “clicks” to get to the different tasks and you also have “to drag” the words to the right places. There are many different grammar tasks here and that can be a bit confusing but if the children are about ten years or older I do not think that there will be any problems. The sound is slightly annoying but the printout sheets are very easy to understand and have nice pictures.
You can also find facts about 26 different animals, one animal to each letter in the alphabet. The facts are for children that has been learning English for a few years and not for our youngest, in school. There are printable worksheets to each animal. They contain information but also quizes, crossword and other fun stuff.
I think that this is a site that I will use with my pupils. I have already tried the songs with my youngest pupils (age 7) and they appreciated that very much. If I should say something negative about it, it must be the different suggestion of other websites. The pupils will probably be tantalised to start other pages that are appealing for them. Some of the work sheets are also a bit boring and resemble a lot of “workbook” tasks but I don’t think that they are bad.
I now hope that you will enjoy this site as much as I do! Good luck!
Carolina Filipsson
I had not seen this site before but I have looked at it now at it looks great. This site contains a lot of things as you have described. I agree about the nice pictures and the sound, it is very good. It is also good that there are links to other sites that can be useful. As a teacher this site is a goldmine with many things to use.
ReplyDeleteSomething I don´t agree with you about is that the site is easy to manage. I think that it is too much text to read and understand for a pupil in class 2 or 3 that just have learned English for one or two years. There are just a few of the icons that directly have pictures to show what the content is about. Mostly there is text that describes the content and you have to click to several links to play. For young children it could be hard to understand what it is about and what to do. Where there are pictures that explain about the content the pictures are quit small and not so easy to understand.
I still think this is a very good site to use especially with a projector so that it is possible to watch with the whole class. There are so many useful things on this website, songs, games and the best of all, printables. Thank you for recommending it, I will definitely use it!
Ingela Johansson