Comics and Vocabulary Building Tools

 

Comic tools are great visuals and students love them. One of such comic tools is

MakeBeliefsComix - great for dyslexic, autistic, hearing impaired students

The website is translated into several world languages. To create a comic you don't even need to sign up but it is prefered in order to have your comics stored. You can have maximum 18 panels. 

There is a special section called Special Needs where you can get many useful ideas how to use Comics with different SEN students (Hearing Impaired, Autism..)

I have used comics with my students in order to help them practice their grammar and language outcomes, you can use them for storytelling or even for creating materials to help SEN students better understand certain topic.

There are also Pixton, Storyboard.That., but MakeBeliefx is somehow more user friendly.

Another good comic website esp. for English Language Learners is

CIELL - Inclusive English Language Learning. This is an EU project whose goal was to enhance the quality of language teaching materials used for teaching writing as a  second language and support the needs of dyslexic learners in a socially inclusive manner.

 

Since I am an English teacher I have the need to introduce you to some nice web 2.0 tools for building students vocabulary. 

1. Lingro

Lingro is a very interesting and useful tool. You or your students just need to type or copy-paste a website address on the Lingro website and it instantly turns that copied website into a clickable dictionary that translates text in 12 languages. Lingro hides in the background until students need it. To use, students simply click on any word and several definitions of the word are instantly displayed. I could see this as very useful tool for just-in-time support for English language learners.

2. Lexipedia

Lexipidia is like a visual Thesaurus. It's very simpleto use. You just need to type in a word and it instantly displays the target word along with other words,usually parts of speech,synonyms and antonyms. It also color-codes the words by both parts of speech and relationships. As you hover over a word, a complete definition is displayed. On the left side of the screen y clicing on the parts of speech you can readthe meanings carefully or you can just hoover over the words in a visual mindmap display. It is available in 6 EU languages,not just English, but also Spanish, Italian,German, Dutch, French.

3. Free Rice

At Free Rice, students can practice matching words to the correct definition, and donate rice at the same time. For each correct answer, the United Nations World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to a country in need. It is both combining vocaulary practice and social awarness? When a student plays, there is a visual display of rice which is added to a bowl each time the student makes a correct response. Free Rice includes several other subject area lists in Geography (like world flags) Science, Math, and others. It is leveled so students can play at just the right level of challenge for them.

Note of caution: Free Rice may be addicting to both you and your students :))

4. Vocabahead

5. Thinglink  

Thinglink is an app or a web tool to make your images interactive. 

Some useful websites: 

About Thinglink for education from their official website

Ways to use Thinglink in the Classroom - PDF

6. Rewordify - (Suggested for K12 and University students)

Rewordify is a powerful and simple tool that can improve students reading abilities as it simplifies the complex vocabulary and help with faster comprehension of certain topics but it also helps students to build up their vocaulary by effectively teaching new words with engaging lessons and all in achieving learning outcomes. 

It's a great tool for university and secondary students. I use it myself to improve my vocabulary skills. This site was created by an English teacher, and according to him "This site makes reading less scary, making it more likely that people will read more."

Try to copy a complex text or just a paragraph from some American or English newspaper or magazines and paste it to Rewordify website to see how it simplifies certain words and expressions.