Summer Break

As it's almost the end of the term here in the UK I'm going to be taking a break from adding daily entries to this blog until late August. I'll be working on the main Primary Resources over the holidays (with a big update in time for the start of the new term) so please keep sending in all your worksheets, teaching ideas and resources.

Collected Links (March - July 2006)

http://primarystuff.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=113
I've put a list of all the site's I've linked to over the past five months in a post on the Primary Resources forums. The list from July 2005 - February 2006 is still there as well. I hope this is useful for some people. I am considering switching to a different blog system in September that will categorise the links so you can browse past blog entries by subject.

Literacy & Language Games

http://www.quia.com/pages/havefun.html
There's a great collection of language games on this US site. Areas covered include synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and grammar. There's also links to the author's other pages of speech games and sequencing activities. The actvities are powered by a service called Quia Web which looks quite interesting and there's lots of examples of other online resources created using these tools on their main website.

Educational Software for the Classroom

http://www.adrianbruce.com/computers/educational-software.htm
I've mentioned Aussie teacher Adrian Bruce's resources before in the blog. He's put up a list of software on his site that he uses regularly. A fair number of the titles have been mentioned in this blog before but there's a few I hadn't come across. Adrian's also hoping to add some material to help you get the most out of the programs at a later date.

Site Update: 13th July 2006

This update, the last one of the current academic year sees over 35 new resources added to the site. Many thanks to everyone that sent in material this week. We'll be working on the site throughout the summer so please keep sending in your teaching ideas, lesson plans, worksheets and other resources. If you find the site useful then try and give something back!

MATHS: 2D Shapes (ppt), 3D Shapes (ppt), Multiplying and Dividing by 4, Multiples of 2 5 & 10, All Possibilities Logic Problems Y3, Number Cards 1-100, Numbers Tracks 1-20, 100 Square, Ordinal Number Cards, Blank Barchart, Days/Months/Seasons Cards, Purses
ENGLISH: Long 'a' Vowel Phoneme, Handwriting Lowercase Letters (Smart)
SCIENCE: Food Chain Game, Rock Permeability
LANGUAGES: French: Animals (ppt), Animals 2 (ppt), Days of the Week (ppt), Food (ppt), Animal Match (ppt), Food, The Body 1 (ppt), The Body 2 (ppt), Colours (ppt), Counting to 20 (ppt), Label the Body, Colours, Match the Numbers
ART: Desert Perspective (ppt)
OTHER: British Sign Language Resources: Colour Signs, Early Years Verbs, Everyday Things, Numbers, Animal Counting, Signing with Young Children.

Food Aid '06

http://www.foodaid.org.uk/
International aid agency Concern Worldwide has recently lauched their FoodAid '06 website. It's part of their annual fundraising campaign that aims to get schools raising money for Concern’s food projects in some of the world’s poorest countries, whilst learning about world hunger.

The campaign gives schools the opportunity to raise vital funds to help break the hunger cycle and transform the lives of some of the world's poorest people. Alongside this teachers and pupils are provided with practical tools to help them learn more about food and hunger in the developing world.

The campaign is linked to World Food Day on October 16th and also to harvest time in the Autumn term. Schools registering for FoodAid receive a fundraising pack, which includes a CD–ROM full of great fundraising ideas and educational resources, including citizenship based lesson plans for Key Stages 1-4 and hunger fact sheets.

Deafsign

http://www.deafsign.com/
Learning about sign language is a great activity to do with primary or secondary children. If you're interested in exploring some of the basics then it's well worth looking at this website from Deafsign. The site contains lots of background information, games, contacts and useful links to sites about deafness and British Sign Language. Deafsign also publish books, dictionaries, posters, flashcards, ebooks and motivational stickers to support learners from Early Years to adults. There's plenty of free downloads so you can try out their resources as well.

Microsoft support for Windows 98, 98SE and ME ends today

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx
Microsoft officially ends its support for the Windows 98, 98SE and ME operating systems today. What this basically means is that they will no longer be providing technical support and security updates for those operating systems. I wonder how many schools are still using machines running Windows 98SE?

Count Us In

http://www.abc.net.au/countusin/
This Australian TV site has fifteen activities designed to help children understand basic number concepts. A couple of the activities seem a little buggy in places but most of them will be very useful for those teaching younger children. The activities I particularly like are 'Coaster Counter' (load the children labelled with 1st, 2nd etc. into the roller coaster in the correct order), 'Feather Count' (match the feathers to the correct number), 'Bus Counting' (put the correct number of children on the bus) and 'Frog Jump' (move the frog across the stream by jumping on the numbers in order).

Priory Woods School

http://www.priorywoods.middlesbrough.sch.uk/
Priory Woods is an all age community special school situated in east Middlesbrough. It has a superb website that's been designed by Ian Bean of Inclusive Technology. There's a large selection of great downloads in their resources section including talking story books, counting songs, games and targetting activities.

Site Update: 7th July 2006

There's been another 25 new resources added to the site this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in resources! We'll be working on the site during the summer break so keep sending in your lesson materials.

MATHS: Addition & Subtraction Using Rounding (3 levels), Halving and Quartering, Number Bonds to 10 (Smart), Reading & Writing to 1000 (Smart), Partitioning (Smart) Y3, Time Work Basics (Smart), Chocolate Bar Maths Ideas (ppt)
ENGLISH: Capital Letters (Proper Nouns), CVC Cloze - Middle 'o', CVC Cloze - Middle 'u', 'ow' Words, Prefixes: re- mis-, 'oa' Words, '-one' and '-ose' Words, '-ope' and '-ole' Words, Connectives (display), 'Eleven English Footballers' Poetry Template
HISTORY: Doctor Who "Famous People" Class Assembly Y2
GEOGRAPHY: Japan (ppt), Weather Report
D&T: Moving Monster Evaluation
OTHER: WALT the Dog, Self Marking Prompts, Blank "Trump Game" Cards
PHOTOS: History: Tudor & mock-Tudor Buildings (7)

Google Pack

[Click here for the link]
Google have put together a downloadable pack of essential software and it's available now from their website.

The pack includes Google Desktop, Google Toolbar for IE (I use this all the time), Picasa (ditto), Google Pack Screensaver, the Firefox Internet browser, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Norton Antivirus 2005 SE and Adobe Reader 7.

You really should have most of those installed already. If you have then the Google Pack installation will check you've got the latest versions on your computer.

[I should also take the time to mention the Portable Apps Suite of programs which allows you to take a lot of great software with you and run it all from a USB memory stick. It's also great if you want to give software like Open Office and the Firefox Internet browser a go without worrying about installing it on your system.]

Junior Film Critic 2006

http://www.filmeducation.org/youngfilmcritic/
I mentioned the Film Education website a couple of weeks ago in the blog. They're currently running a series of competitions under the Young Film Critic banner.

For children aged 7-11 there's the Junior Film Critic of the Year. Students need to submit an original film review of no more than 200 words.

Children aged 3-7 can take part in the Mini Film Fan competition. They need to come up with a poster or draw a scene from their favourite film.

The winning students in each competition will receive a Yamaha home theatre system and will also win a Smartboard for their school. There are film goody bag prizes for the runner ups. Closing date for entries is Thursday 28th September 2006.

K-Zone

http://www.bteducation.org/resources/kzone.ikml
The resources on this site from BT aim to develop communication skills. My personal favourite resources have got to be the Caveman to Spaceman animated story (which tells you all about the history of communication) and Making Faces (drag and drop facial features to create different expressions). It's part of the BT Education program website. The main website also includes a nice guide on how to make your own podcasts (registration required, it's free though).

Welltown

http://www.welltown.gov.uk
Welltown is a lovely little site aimed at KS1 students. It explores all aspects of health; physical, mental and emotional. The site covers a lot of Science and PSHE material including healthy eating, physical activity, accidents, bullying, smoking and safety in the sun. As you'd expect there's also a full guide for teachers and parents to get the most out of the online material.

Crickweb's Flash Studio

http://www.crick.northants.sch.uk/crickweb.htm
There's lots of great online activities on the Crick Primary School website. They've got material for literacy, numeracy, science and early years together with a great collection of links. It's well worth visiting.