Young learners can now publish their writing on the New LearnEnglish Kids site: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/

Where?
Students can read and send in comments on many areas of the site, including:

• Short stories: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories

• Kids Talk: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/kids-talk

• Songs: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/songs

• Fun with English: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/fun-with-english

• Make your own: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/make-your-own

Here are some learners’ comments in Songs:
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/songs/my-computer-mouse

If you want your learners to write longer contributions the following spaces might be more appropriate:

• Your turn: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/your-turn

• Stories: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/stories

Here are some great traditional stories from around the world posted in Your turn: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/your-turn/traditional-stories-around-the-world

How does it work?
Learners send in their writing to LearnEnglish kids then each contribution is read by a moderator. The moderator checks that the contribution is in English (of course!), that it can be clearly understood (it doesn’t have to error free though – making mistakes is part of the learning process) and that it doesn’t break the house rules (see below). The writing will then be posted within 24 hours.

Classroom ideas
Here are some tips and ideas to get your students writing in class.

Before you write

First students need to become members. Any child aged 13 and under can become a member of LearnEnglish Kids. Here’s how:

There is a ‘user login’ box on every page of the site. Users should click on ‘become a member’ or visit this page:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/user/register

There is a simple form to complete. Children will have to give an e-mail address, as this is where the password information will be sent. If your students don’t have their own e-mail address they will have to join with the help of their parents. This is a good idea anyway so that parents are involved in the process.

For more details on becoming a member click here: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/new-learnenglish-kids

Make sure that your learners’ contributions are in line with the House rules: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/house-rules

You could do the following class activity based on these house rules:

Have your students work in pairs, or as a class, to compile a list of house rules for an English learning website for children. Then ask them to compare their list with the LearnEnglish Kids House rules and say how similar or different their rules are. You could talk about why it’s important to have (and stick to!) these rules.

You could spend a lesson on having students become members and going through the house rules in preparation for a future lesson of writing to LearnEnglish Kids.

Writing a short comment

Choose a song:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/songs

a video:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/kids-talk

a short story:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories

or an activity:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/fun-with-english

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/make-your-own

that is related to a topic you have covered in class recently or you could ask students to choose a selection and then have a class vote on which one to use in the next class.

Before you start you might want play a game or do an activity to revise or introduce some related language. You’ll find related games and activities in the ‘more about this topic’ list on the right of your chosen song, video, story or activity.

Under each song, story, video and activity there is also a purple box containing questions or a task designed to prompt a response from students (look here for an example:http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories/the-lazy-bear ). You could write each question on large sheets of paper and stick these on the walls around the classroom before the start of the class. You can adapt and/or add to the questions depending on your learners’ level and age.

After playing the song, video or story, your learners could do one of the printable worksheets available in the orange blocks on the same page.

Students then walk around the classroom and write their answers under each question. Give them lots of help and demonstrate the activity first by moving from paper to paper and asking them what you could write. The focus should be on producing ideas rather than accuracy at this stage. Give them a time limit to keep this activity lively and avoid students getting stuck on producing perfect English. When students have finished writing, give out one or two of the written-on sheets to pairs or small groups. Ask each group to read what’s on their sheet and give some feedback to the class. This could be just reading the question and one of the answers or a higher level could summarize the information, e.g. ‘Most people go to bed at 10 o’clock.’

Now you could have students read any comments posted by other learners under the song, video, story or activity. How similar/ different are these to your learners’ answers?

Tell students that they are going to send in comments to the same place in a moment. Students work individually to prepare their comments first. Encourage students to respond to one or more of the prompts in the purple box. Students can write on paper or in a word document, ready to cut and paste. Set a time limit of 4 minutes then have students swap papers/ computers with a partner to check for errors. Give lots of help and remind students that their comments don’t need to be perfect to be published.

Students then log in and post their comments. See ‘How do students post contributions?’ below.

Writing longer contributions

To encourage your learners to write and post longer contributions, you could choose an item from:

Your turn: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/your-turn

or

Stories: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/stories

that is related to a topic you have recently covered in class. You could ask students to chose a selection and then have a class vote on which one to use in the next lesson.

(Short responses might also be appropriate here – see above for ideas on producing these.)

As a lead to the writing activity have a class chat about what things students read and write in their own languages.

After reading a story or some of the posted contributions, ask your students for a personal response. They could simply say whether or not they liked what they read. Higher levels could give more complex responses, e.g., discuss their favourite characters, talk about similar experiences, say whether they agree with the writer, predict what might happen next.

Next, focus on some language that will help students write. If you have read student contributions you could ask your learners to identify any errors and correct these as a class on the board. If you have read a story you could ask students to pick out useful language for story writing – once upon a time, all of a sudden, then, after that, in the end. Students can also identify tenses and say why they are used or use dictionaries to look up new words.

Tell students that they are going to write to LearnEnglish Kids in response to either the Your Turn question or the task under the story in the purple box.

For lower levels produce a class text by eliciting ideas from your students and building up the text together on the board. First divide the board in half and use one part for making notes as a class to plan your writing. Then ask students to put hands up and tell you what to write on the other half of the board- sentence by sentence. Feed in ideas and corrections as you go. Finally have students use the model on the board to write their own parallel text.

More autonomous students can write their text in pairs on OHTs (write in rough on paper first) or on the computer. Give lots of help with ideas and language as students write. Display the texts to the class (on OHP or projector), have the writers read their work and elicit corrections from the others. Students then produce a final corrected draft.

For a really easy way to write a story, use Story maker: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/make-your-own/story-maker

Students just have to choose the characters, words and places and – abracadabra - a story is instantly created!

How do students post contributions?

Students click on Login (assuming they have already registered in a previous lesson) and follow instructions to send in their writing to the appropriate place on LearnEnglish Kids. If possible, demonstrate this by helping one student to log in and send their writing while others watch.

Have some extra activities ready for students who have finished or are waiting to use a computer, for example, one of the printable activities from ‘More about this topic’ on the right of the page that you are sending writing to. Or look through the alphabetical list in ‘Practise your English’ to find an appropriate printable activity: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/practise-your-english

Check the site after a couple of days to see students’ written work live on LearnEnglish Kids!

When you have used some of these ideas, why not come back to this page and leave a comment below to tell us how your class went. Let us know if you have any additional ideas!

By Sally Trowbridge, British Council, Spain