World AIDS Day 2015

World AIDS Day is held on the 1^st December each year since 1988. This is one of the eight official global campaigns marked by the World Health Organization and an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and mourn those who have died of the disease.

Education plays a crucial role to raise awareness of the AIDS pandemic. You can find here a list of resources on AIDS that can be useful for the ESL/ EFL classroom.

UNAIDS Factsheet (2015):

http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/20150901_FactSheet_2015_en.pdf

UNAIDS Infographics:

http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/infographics

NAT.org.uk:

http://www.nat.org.uk/Publications/Teachers-resources.aspx

http://www.nat.org.uk/Publications/HIV-Awareness-Materials.aspx

TES:

https://www.tes.com/article.aspx?storyCode=6296522

Education Scotland:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/resources/w/worldaidsday.asp

TeacherVision:

https://www.teachervision.com/illness-and-diseases/hiv-and-aids/teacher-resources/6594.html

Larry Ferlazzo:

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/09/27/the-best-web-resources-for-learning-about-hiv-aids/

AIDS.gov:

https://es.pinterest.com/aidsgov/

HIV/AIDS Educational awareness:

https://www.pinterest.com/liaac/hiv-aids-education-awareness/

CATIE Talking to Kids about HIV/AIDS (booklet)

http://librarypdf.catie.ca/PDF/P25/22195e.pdf

Study Jams (Math)

Fantastic built on Flash resources provided by Scholastic that cover elementary mathematics topics (numbers, addition & subtraction, multiplication & division, fractions, decimals & percents, algebra, geometry, measurement, data analysis, probability and problem solving).

These resources consist mainly of videos and interactive activities.

http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/math/index.htm 

TED-Ed lessons

Amazing opportunity to find original TED-Ed lessons (the result of the collaborations between expert educators, screenwriters and animators) and customized lessons created by adding teachers' or website visitors' own questions, notes and resources.

Topics include: Arts, Business & Economics, Design, Engineering & Technology, Health, Literature & Language, Mathematics, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science & Technology, Social Studies, Teaching & Education and Thinking & Learning.

You can filter the lessons by content, level, and duration of the video.

http://ed.ted.com/lessons

An example:

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-sitting-is-bad-for-you-murat-dalkilinc 

Smarty Pins

Smarty Pins is a browser-based game developed by Google that test your knowledge on geography across a number of categories: arts & culture, science, sports & games, entertainment and history & current events. You have to answer by placing a pin on a map.

You start each game with a bank of 1,000 miles/ 1,609 kilometres. You can lose miles/ kilometres for answering incorrectly and or taking too long to answer. The game subtracts the number of miles/ kilometres you're off by for each answer.. Fast, correct answers earn extra miles/ kilometres to keep the player’s journey going longer. When your bank hits zero, it is game over.

You can share your scores via Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

https://smartypins.withgoogle.com/

As simple as addictive.

SchoolTube

K-12 moderated video sharing platform, specifically designed for students and teachers. It was created by Andrew and Carl Arizpe and initially sponsored by The National Geographic Society.

In the United States the website is used by more than 60,000 schools and is endorsed by the most influential education associations.

Video topics include environment, science and technology, food, journalism, etc. Students and teachers are allowed to find all videos shared from their schools by using a search engine. Videos portraying violence, vulgarities, sexual situations, and copyrighted materials are prohibited from publication. To that end, students cannot upload a video until a teacher says it appropriate to publish.

http://www.schooltube.com/

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/schooltube

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SchoolTube/

Ozdic.com

When teaching a new word it is important to provide some of its most common collocations. There are many online tools which fulfill this purpose effectively. We will mention one of them.

Ozdic.com is an amazing and very useful dictionary that helps English learners write and speak more natural-sounding. It contains over 150,000 collocations for nearly 9,000 headwords. Examples of how the collocations are used in context are provided.

Ozdic.com is based on the 100 million word British National Corpus.

http://www.ozdic.com/

Holiday lessons

Holiday lessons provide a fun way to learn about culture and history for ESL or EFL students. The following collection of links will help you find teaching resources and ready to use lesson plans for a wide variety of holidays and celebrations.

• http://www.eslholidaylessons.com/
• http://www.educationworld.com/holidays/
• http://lessonplanspage.com/seasonalthemes-htm/
• http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary/holidays_and_celebrations-worksheets/
• http://www.eds-resources.com/edholiday.htm
• http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/celebrating-holidays-classroom
• https://www.classwallet.com/holiday-classroom-resources/
• http://k6educators.about.com/od/holidaysandspecialevents/
• http://www.eds-resources.com/edholiday.htm
• http://www.mrdonn.org/holidays.html

Píldoras estadísticas… also in English

Pequeños vídeos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística en los que se explican conceptos de uso relativamente frecuente relativos a la estadística. 

Los vídeos tienen una versión en inglés que puede serviros para introducir vocabulario específico pero de uso cotidiano a la hora de ofrecer datos sobre un país o una comunidad.

http://www.ine.es/explica/explica_pasos_pildoras.htm

Thanksgiving

Gracias al increíblemente útil blog Free Technology for Teachers, una vez pasados los miedos de Halloween, hemos tenido noticia de un recurso que aborda otra celebración importante en América del Norte (Estados Unidos y Canadá): el Día de Acción de Gracias (Thanksgiving Day).

The First Thanksgiving es un material audiovisual muy atractivo para conocer a través del inglés el origen de la celebración y sus raíces. Descubrir las tradiciones y la cultura nos ayuda a conocer también la lengua de las comunidades que las consideran parte de ellas mismas y de su historia y a comprender mejor a estas comunidades en su contexto. 

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/daily_life/