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Incorporating CMC activities where students communicate with outside audiences is more difficult for teachers working with children. Kidlink is a moderated website that allows children and teachers to share projects, comment on other kids' projects, and connect with epals. All content is moderated. I have not personally used this website, but it looks like a resource worth looking into for teachers working with children. If nothing else, it may provide some inspiration for creating projects or organizing a similar sort of collaborative activity.

English-Guide.org is an incredible website, albeit it looks like it is designed for children. That said, if you're teaching children English learners, great; you're all set to go. If you're teaching adults, this site could be used as a respite from the intensity of intensive English programs. While many of the resources on the site are language learning games that take the form of drill-and-kill exercises, not all of the material is so rudimentary. For instance, the Career/Business section under Listening links to many listening passages at elllo.org (another useful site for listening and speaking teachers). On elllo, learners can listen to business passages, such as one on personality traits and answer comprehension questions. It would be tempting to let a class full of learners loose on this site to see what resources they would gravitate toward. The major categories of resources Vocabulary, Listening, Grammar, and Others, and within these categories, like I mentioned, there are both games and more sophisticated exercises at the learners' fingertips.

BarryFunEnglish is a site aimed at ESL/EFL for younger learners. It has a good number of boardgame style games that can be quickly set up and customized- this is the chief advantage for using the site over a traditional version of Monopoly or Battleship. Coupled with a large display (i.e. projector, large TV), classes of up to ~12 students can be included in playing the game without too much downtime for any one student or team. You can set up custom vocab lists, but it's limited to the vocab items in the site's database, so you're mostly limited to beginner level English. Having used this at my past job teaching young EFL learners, I will say that it can be tempting to use it as a crutch- don't just play a game for the sake of playing a game, or killing time. I'd also recommend varying the games you use and definitely make use of the customizable vocab lists. Still, a huge part of being a child is playing games with other children, and linguistically, that means game playing can help develop a lot of the meta-language that children use for games.

"A free website to teach children to read with phonics. For preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Exciting phonics games and online interactive books." I used this site when I was teaching preschool. It could also be used to teach language learners. However, because of the content, it should be used with beginners who are young. When I used this site it was mainly with children between 4 and 5 years old, and they absolutely loved it. Not only were they using a "big person toy" by being on the computer, but they were truly learning valuable language skills.

Welcome to Fun English Games for Kids! Find a wide range of free teaching resources that are perfect for students learning English, ESL classes and teachers looking for ideas online. Enjoy interactive games, classroom activities, printable worksheets and much more!

Some reminders and tips for teaching children.