About WebEnglish.se
WebEnglish.se is a curated collection of resources for teachers of English who wish to introduce ICT in their English classrooms. This free website offers inspiration, lesson plans and authentic teaching materials for the Compulsory School levels (A1-B1) in Sweden. All the materials comply with the Swedish Curriculum Lgr11 and most only require one computer and a projector in the classroom. Teachers from other countries are naturally also welcome to use the links and subscribe to WebEnglish.se.n
The founder of WebEnglish.se, Ms Outi Frisk, is an experienced English teacher, textbook author and a long-time teacher trainer.n
Apart from the website, the founder of WebEnglish.se also offers inspirational talks, pedagogical advice and material suggestions for teachers at any level of the Swedish compulsory school.nContact via e-mail: [email protected]
Themes. The key feature in WebEnglish.se is the themes. There are enough themes to cover the whole curriculum from year 4-9. It is recommended that teachers choose which themes their students wish to study at the beginning of each term using the Planning Page. Some example themes are Weather (Elementary 3-4), Pirates (Elementary 5-6) and Tolerance (Intermediate 7-9).
Beginner / Elementary / Intermediate / Teen Beginner Levels. For those who want to choose from a limited prime selection there is a list of carefully chosen activities for each level, divided into different categories, e.g. reading, writing, listening, speaking and form focus. For further inspiration, there are suggestions for classroom literature and films/videos.
Chapters. For those who think that a chapter in a school book is the safest way about, there are some chosen chapters from three school books, both published and unpublished, written by the site author for grades 6-8. These are in .pdf and printable, located under Themes in the Main Menu.
My Classes is a blog from the web author to her students. Most of the students are teenagers, recently arrived immigrants and asylum seekers in Sweden. You are free to explore the blog for some inspiration and surprise links that you will not find anywhere else in WebEnglish.se.
Teaching Matters. For those who want to get new ideas as teachers, WebEnglish.se posts inspirational texts and video clips every week. The latest ones are on the Homepage and the archive is on Teaching Matters. WebEnglish.se publishes even more educational posts on WebEnglish.se Facebook page.
Calendar. For those who wish to bring the various holidays and yearly celebrations into their classroom, there are some recommended materials for most levels behind the actual date in the calendar. See Teach by Calendar.
Technical Overview
Compatibility. Webenglish.se works well on any relatively modern device used in schools; PC, Mac, Tablets, Mobile phones, iPhones. It utilises Responsive Web Design methodology (an alternative explanation in Swedish available here). Internet browsers and plugin software (e.g. Adobe) to be used should be of the latest version. That is the golden rule of browser security, anyway.
Operational availability. The website server is located at a well-reputed cloud provider in Sweden, City Network. No 100% guarantee can be made on uptime. An aspiration is that planned disruptive operational changes are made after Teachers’ Office hours (06.00 – 23.00, Sunday thru Friday). Non-disruptive changes as updates of links and minor web design changes occur all the time. Considering the voluntary characteristics of support it may take some unpredicted time to restore the website in case of a total service disruption caused by external factors, e.g. failure of cloud provider services or Denial Of Service attacks.
Operational excellence. This free and voluntary sharing initiative depends on free or low-cost services for its performance. This does not exclude that utmost care has been taken to select services and software that deliver good user experience and security relative to cost, e.g. Pacethemes.com, WordPress.com and Cloudflare.com. User experience is tested at webpagetest.org.
Contact. You can give feedback and request links or themes that you would like to see added to WebEnglish.se by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
As you can see, with WebEnglish.se even the sky isn’t the limit, as there’s a whole universe out there.
Just remember to have fun!
Your Host, Outi Frisk
