Our Learning

Our trainer Mary Cooch is blogging this week  with ideas for Primary School Moodles. This is the second in the series…

In the past, I always thought of a glossary as a ready-made list of key terms in a particular subject. But in Moodle it doesn’t have to be the teacher doing all the work. By default students can add entries to any glossary you make (via “add an activity”>”glossary“) You can have them adding words as a homework. They could even add little poems they might have created. You can moderate them before they appear and/or allow others to comment on them. It’s a great way of having the children feel empowered  building their own learning collaboratively. And it’s less effort for you too! For detailed instructions on how to make a glossary for your young pupils, see the documentation here for Moodle 2 and here for Moodle 1.9

A random glossary block

But why not stop at key terms and why stop at the glossary activity in the centre of your course page? The random glossary entry block is a great way to display glossary entries – you could display a glossary of “thoughts/prayers for the day”; for example. You could have pupils introduce themselves in a glossary and display one pupil a day – or whenever the page is refreshed!. If you do have key terms or foreign language words, the random glossary block can -almost by stealth – teach them to your children if you set it to change each time they revisit your course.

But you might feel you need to get them started by adding a few key terms/thoughts/words

Moodle 2 Import glossary entries

of your own first. It is easy to import glossaries from other Moodles and before you start, check out the glossary exchange on Moodle.org to see if  they are any you can adapt from there. To import a  glossary, simply make your glossary as mentioned above and then click either the “import” tab in Moodle 1.9 or the “import entries” link in the glossary administration in Moodle 2 (pictured here) and upload your glossary that you have got from elsewhere.

And -because it is the Festive Season, we have a free Christmas glossary you can import into your Moodle course Download the  Merry Christmas in Different Languages glossary  here and then import it as outlined above. Then get your children to add the words Merry Christmas in other languages – their own for instance. (We’ve left some out on purpose!) You will also find, as an added extra, there’s a Christmas words glossary for those of you who do Primary French. It has the beginnings of a glossary of Christmas terms in French. Add this and improve on it yourself – or again, get your pupils to research and contribute. And Joyeux Noël!