Llengua anglesa a primària. Competència digital

A characteristic group of activities in EFL classes are games. Games are considered to be especially useful for teaching purposes because they engage students in the process of learning. Games may be especially adequate to improve listening skills, attention span and concentration and, at the same time, they can be of great help to practice specific language patterns and vocabulary in a context in which language is used meaningfully.

In this practice we are having a look at the BBC website addressed to children. It contains a wealth of all kind of activities, stories, songs and games to practice the language. First, we will focus on a game for students in cicle inicial as an example of an online game. Then, we will explore different possibilities of this website.

• Go to the BBC Children website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/children). As you see the site provides a wide range of resources and materials for children organized by categories: books and movies, discover and learn, games, music and radio.

• Enter the games category. Then click on the CBeebies section.

• Go to the Bobinogs section.

• Enter the activity: Do eggs grow on trees?

• It will open a Flash movie pop-up window. When the page finishes loading, the activity starts.

This is basically a listen and do activity. Children have to listen to the instructions of the Bobinogs Nib, Ogi and Bobin and follow them. The explanations are easy to understand and the instructions are simple.

In the first part of the activity children have to guess where eggs come from: ”Do you know where eggs come from? Do they grow on a tree? Do they come from hens? Click on the correct picture”.

In the second part they have to find the eggs and click on them: ”Can you help me find six eggs? Click on the eggs when you spot them”.

In the following screens the same kind of questions are asked with apples and milk. At the end of the activity you have the options of printing a worksheet with an activity related to the game played or playing the same game again . Close the pop-up window to finish.

• Methodology: This activity is adressed to students of cicle inicial. If there are enough computers available, put them in pairs. They can share the mouse and take turns to click when following the instructions.
• Timing: the activity lasts aproximatelly five minutes (but you have to take into acount the time to connect to the website and get to the activity). A half of an hour session will be perfect. If they finish early they can move to another game in the same site.

If you enter the BBC Children website, you can access to a wide range of activities for children from 6 to 12. You have to bear in mind that this site is adressed to English native speakers and the amount of language is considerable. But they are many activities that our students can do, you have to select them carefully according to the language level and your students’ interests. We suggest you to have a look at these sections:

• Activities and Makes → Big Cook Litlle Cook
• Books and Movies → Tikkabilla Stories
• Discover and learn → CBBC Wild
• Music and Radio → CBeebies Sing a Song → Themes