Technology tools for teaching beginners online
I’m a huge fan of Quizlet and use it in almost every lesson (here’s how), but recently I’ve been experimenting with a few other authoring tools (ones where you can make your own content) with my 10-12 year old beginners. I find that once they know how to use the tool this is the easiest way to create student-centred activities, because they don’t need my help to generate new prompts or to keep the activity going, and a lot of the tools are fairly intuitive so they don’t need too much explanation to understand how to use them. The ultimate sign of a good technology tool with this age group is when they ask to continue playing – how often do you hear your young/teen students ask for more drilling? Or more spelling practice? Or more time to speak to their partners? With these tools they do!
Wheel Decide allows you to create spinning wheels with text. I made one with a set of sentences based on Project 1 Unit 3. Each sentence had one, two, or three words inside * *. The students had to write their own version of the sentence in a Google Doc changing the words in the stars. For example, they see My monster has got *three arms*. and they change it to My monster has got two wings.
Class Tools has a huge range of different adaptable templates. I used the Vortex template to create a categorisation game where students decided if verb phrases went with I/you/we/they or he/she/it, to help them get exposure to the third person -s endings. If you want to create your own, make sure you type the link somewhere else and check it opens before you close your beautiful creation because otherwise you probably won’t be able to get it back!

Flippity has a range of templates based on Google spreadsheets which are easy to adapt. The randomiser creates a kind of slot machine. I used something simliar to this as a prompt for drilling daily routine with times in a more student-centred way, but the randomiser tool is much easier to use – go to Flippity for a demo and full instructions.
I know I’m late to the Wordwall party, but I’ve definitely arrived now! I’ve found lots of resources which created by other teachers based on the book I’m using (see the list below). My favourite game is another categorisation one, based on daily routine phrases. It was originally made as a ‘group sort’ task, similar to the vortex above, but you have the option of making it into ‘whack a mole’ which I think is potentially more memorable. Students have to hit the moles which are ‘have’ and avoid the ones which are ‘go’. Each level has more moles. I haven’t actually tried this with my students yet, but I’m sure they’ll like it.
Here is a (view-only) full list of all of the online resources I’ve found or created to use with OUP’s Project 1 4th edition book. If you have suggestions for other specific resources for this book which I could add or simple authoring tools I should try with my students, please leave them in the comments below. I’ll be teaching this group until June 2021, so the list will continue to evolve between now and then.