Site Update: 28th October 2005

Over 40 new resources have been added this week. They're all marked with a blue NEW symbol. Full details are below. We're also launching our commercial sister site Primary Extra this week. Click here for details.

MATHS: Three in a row / Rocket Race / Pig / Caterpillar Lengths / Pencil Lengths / Simple Partitioning / Taking Away (Easy) / Missing Number Subtraction / Take Away Mix / Introducing Fractions (ppt) / Don't Subtract, Add / Adding in Parts / Balancing Act / Comparisons / Jumping the Number Line / Near Doubles / Numbers Near 100 / People's Ages / How many 10s and 100s / Tidy Number Jumps / Pizza Challenge (smart) / Quadrilateral Sorting (x2) / Shape Sorter (smart)
ENGLISH: Plurals (adding s) / The Beach (ea words) / sh, ch or th? / y, igh and ie / Magic 'e' / Adverbs (ppt) / Writing a Recount (ppt) / Reciprocal Reading (ppt) / Speech Punctuation (smart)
SCIENCE: How a flower is pollinated (ppt) / Absorbency (ppt)
HISTORY: Farming in Ancient Egypt (ppt) / Social Organisation in Ancient Egypt (ppt) / Roman Legacy (ppt) / Victorian Timeline Cut & Paste / Victorian Timeline - Cut & Paste ICT
RE: Why Sundays? (smart)

New Site: Primary Extra

www.primaryextra.co.uk
I'm going to be sending out details about this tomorrow but I thought I'd give blog readers a heads up about our relaunched sister site Primary Extra. Primary Extra will contain new, specially created, commercial educational resources for primary teachers.

Our first release through this site is the 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' Teaching Pack. 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' is based on the popular download on the Primary Resources website. This new version of 'Greg Arious and the Lexicons' has been completely redrawn, coloured and updated. The primary focus of the story is on teaching about synonyms and the use of a thesaurus. The pack features lots of new material and contains printable versions of the book (both in full colour and black and white), a presentation of the story for use on interactive whiteboards or large screens, a teacher's guide and activity sheets. The teaching pack is available to purchase as an online download or delivered by post on CD.

I hope you like this new resource. 'Greg Arious' has taken over a month to develop (as a full time project). I'd just like to point out that the launch of Primary Extra will not impact on my work on Primary Resources. Since September 2005 I've added over 500 new resources to the Primary Resources website (there will be another update this week) at the same time as developing new resources for Primary Extra. Income generated from Primary Extra (together with advertising revenue from the main site) fund the work on Primary Resources.

Really p*ssed off!

Last night I received an email from a friend of a teacher who had been trying to purchase some teaching materials through Ebay. He contacted me because he recognised that several of the resources being sold were actually taken from the Primary Resources website and offered for sale with little or no alterations!

This is absolutely unacceptable! These resources have been freely contributed by other teachers to this site and now this teacher is making money by selling them. It's been very hard to track down how much of our stuff has been stolen in this manner but I've identified at least six items that have been repeatedly sold on Ebay that contain material directly lifted from this site.

Needless to say I've emailed the teacher to tell her to take the resources down and have gone through the copyright infringement complaints process with Ebay. If you're a regular user of Ebay then please keep your eyes open for this type of thing.

Primary Resources is a site dedicated to the free sharing of resources between teachers. We will take legal action if necessary to protect our copyright.

Whizz-Kidz

www.whizz-kidz.org.uk/schools
Whizz-Kidz, a charity that provides mobility equipment for disabled children have been in touch to tell me about their new resource pack for schools. As well as the downloads on the site above they're also offering a free CD-ROM filled with teaching ideas, resources, activity sheets and case studies. It's disability awareness week during the 14th-18th November so if you want some resources (either for that week or throughout the year) then it's a site worth checking out.

Some new stuff...

There's no update this week due to half term coming up (here in the UK for those who haven't had it already). I'm still adding resources and this material should go online at the end of next week.

I thought I'd pop some links here to some new powerpoints that are in the batch of resources that I've already got ready for the update...

Maths: Introducing Fractions (Steve Kersys)
Science: How a Flower is Pollinated (Samantha Scott)
History: Farming in Ancient Egypt (Victoria Allen), Social Organisation (Victoria Allen), The Roman Legacy (Angharad Thomas)

Another 5 Random Links!

5 more websites randomly chosen from links saved in my favourites...

Earthcam for Kids
http://www.earthcamforkids.com/
A searchable directory of webcams from all over the world.

BBC Schools: Dance Mat Typing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/
Learn to type with this cool site from the BBC.

Stories from the Web
http://www.storiesfromtheweb.org/
Things to read, activities to do and plenty of interviews with famous authors. This site has been around for a long time and just keeps getting better.

NAACE Primary Classroom Activities
http://www.mape.org.uk/activities/index.htm
Formerly the MAPE site this page contains all the old (but still great!) MAPE activities. One of my favourites is the Sherlock Holmes Whodunnit mystery that involves you using a database to solve crimes. There's plenty of big books, programs, clipart and games to download.

Nordic Gods
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/nordic/index.htm
This site was very useful when studying the Vikings.

Past Explorers

http://www.pastexplorers.org.uk/
Past Explorers is a history website for Key Stage 2 students and their teachers that has been created by the portable antiquities scheme.

It features some nice resources about different periods in time and the archaeological process. The best bit about the site, though, are the links to PAS database. The PAS database holds details of finds from across the country and many of the entries also include photographs. Past Explorers has some 'saved searches' that give you quick links in to objects that you may find relevant to the history you need to teach. Take a look at these Roman coins.

Mathszone

http://www.mathszone.co.uk
Mathszone has been running for quite some time now. It brings together and links lots of the cool interactive programs and resources that are dotted all over the net. I've found it very useful myself in the past which is the reason it's one of the few sites that are allowed to link to Primary Resources' files directly.

Resources are organised by key stage and national numeracy area and there's lots of material that is great for use on an interactive whiteboard.

Just 'Stuff'

I notice that I've got Andrew Ross hooked on the Scary Go Round webcomic that I mentioned in a previous post. Sorry about that, Andrew :)

There's so many webcomics available on the Internet, many of them put together by some really talented people. As you would imagine a lot of them are American and a huge number are related to computer gaming (including my personal favourite PVP). A completely random one that I discovered recently is the excellent 'Bunny'. I've got a bit of a soft spot for rabbits anyway and the quality of the art on this is amazing.

[On the 'Scary Go Round' front, surely a great purchase for teachers is this 'Scary Go Round' T-Shirt!]

National Whiteboard Network

http://www.nwnet.org.uk/

The National Whiteboard Network is a site I used quite a lot in the Spring and Summer terms when I was lucky enough to have a interactive whiteboard in my class. The number of resources on the site has been growing steadily this past year and it's now one of the first places you should stop off at for resources at the start of each term.

There's material linked to the National Strategy, the various intervention support strategies and the foundation subjects and it usually comes available for the main types of interactive whiteboard. I used it a lot last year for history and science resources.

Every term they put together a package of resources that fit the objectives that you're likely to be covering. The Autumn Package is one of the best so far with lots of resources linked to the maths unit plans as well as some interesting new material on non-fiction texts.

If you have an interactive whiteboard then check it out.

Site Update: 14th October 2005

60 new resources have been added to the site this week. New resources are indicated by the red NEW image. Click here for a full list of additions.

Pluck It!

I've mentioned RSS feeds a little in the past. Andrew Ross' Primary Teacher UK Blog has a good guide to RSS if you've never heard of it before. Basically it's a technology that allows websites to publish material so that other people may view it without visiting their webpages. You can collect and read RSS feeds using a newsreader program and it's a great way of pulling together a lot of information.

At some point I really need to try out a few of the other newsreaders that are available. Andrew Ross mentioned the new Google Newsreader program in his Blog yesterday which looks interesting. The program I currently use is called Pluck.

Pluck integrates with your web browser and gives you a new button on the bar at the top of the screen. When you click it all your feeds appear on the left of the screen and you can click on each one to read them. It's really easy to set up, I haven't had any problems with it and it's also free.

It's quite easy to end up with an interesting mix of feeds sitting side by side in your newsreader. I've currently got lots of education news feeds such as BBC News, Education Guardian, Telegraph News and the TES Media Blog. My love of Rugby Union is reflected in the BBC Rugby Union feed and Telegraph Sport. More personal choices include the new Doctor Who series' feed (I'm reliving my childhood) and webcomics feeds such as Scarey Go Round (a quirky British cartoon strip).

Many blogs can automatically generate newsfeeds. This site and the 'In the News...' site have one as well as blogs that I mention fairly frequently such as Little Miss Teacher and Primary Teacher UK.

5 Random Links!

I haven't posted anything for a while so I thought I'd put up 5 completely randomly chosen links to resources that I've used in the past...

Click to Learn: Terrapods
http://www.clicktolearn.co.uk/episodes.htm
These super flash-powered adventures of the Terrapods cover Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 numeracy objectives. The main site also has lots of free resources for teachers and parents.

Patterns in Nature
http://www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/patterns_nature/index.htm
This resource, from Sir Robert Hitcham Primary School in Suffolk, has some excellent photographs that show examples of patterns naturally occuring in nature.

NGfL Cymru
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc-home.htm
Take a look at the VTC from the NGfL in Wales. It's full of lots of great lessons that are perfect for use on an interactive whiteboard. I've used quite a few of these myself in the past.

The Visual Thesaurus
http://www.visualthesaurus.com
This is something that you have to pay for but give the free trial a go... it's great fun. Enter a word and watch as it creates a spider diagram with synonyms and words related to your starting word. Click on one of the new words and it branches out again. It's really cool.

The Met Office Learning Centre
http://www.meto.gov.uk/education/index
There's some useful resources here if you're looking at weather as a theme in geography. This page also links to the met office webcams (great for comparing the weather across the UK) and also currently features an art competition that your students can enter (closes 30th November 2005).

Site Update: 7th October 2005

40 new resources have been added to the site this week. New resources are indicated by the green NEW image. Click here for a full list of additions.

Educational Pictures

http://www.edupics.com
Mike de Kievith, a teacher in Belgium, has asked me to give his website Edupics a mention. It's full of thousands of pictures that would be really useful in the classroom. All the pictures are conviniently grouped into categories so it's really easy to find what you need. They're perfect for use for displays, on worksheets or just as colouring pictures linked to topics you're looking at.

(If you're looking for educational pictures then it's also worth checking out the DK Clip Art page that I've mentioned in a past blog entry).

Mexicolore

http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/index.php?one=azt
The team at Mexicolore have asked me to give their Aztec teaching resources site a mention.

Mexicolore is a small, independent artefact-based teaching team specializing on Mexico and the Aztecs. Over the past 25 years they've worked in over 1,300 primary schools alone in England, as well as running several series of workshops for schools in the Museum of Mankind, British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts.

The site is quite interesting with pages for teachers, expert Q&As, information about Aztec life, stories, artefacts, reviews, weblinks and lots more.

ArtisanCam

http://www.artisancam.org.uk/
I recently received an email about this fascinating art website. I'd not come across it before but I'll definitely be spending a lot of time exploring it further.

ArtisanCam is a free on-line teaching aid aimed at Key Stage 2 & 3 pupils and teachers. Backed by artists, it’s an interactive site where pupils can watch live-streaming of an artist working in a studio and on location as they create a piece of work.

Participating schools can submit questions via e-mail or participate in live video-conferences and the pupils can even submit pictures of there own work to the gallery section of the site.

There's lots of past projects archived on the site that you can watch. In one of the examples you can view Anthony Gormley's great 'Field for the British Isles' piece of work being assembled. Consisting of 40,000 little clay people it's certainly a major undertaking.

Well worth visiting and best experienced with a broadband connection.