I’ve been busy making a few changes to Teaching Ideas recently. For those who don’t know it, the site is a collection of thousands of lesson ideas, activities and resources that teachers are welcome to use in their classrooms. The site was originally set up (back in 1998) as a place for primary teachers to find educational content and it now contains many resources for secondary teachers too.

Here is an outline of some of the changes:
- The site used to be split into ‘Teaching Ideas’ (containing ideas for each curriculum subject) and ‘More Teaching Ideas’ (with ideas for assemblies, classroom management and more). I have now changed the navigation system so that all of these sections are accessible from the same set of tabs at the top.
- The team at PurpleMash have also allowed me to add lots of their wonderful app-tivities to the resources on Teaching Ideas. If you click on a link with the new PurpleMash icon (
), you will be able to access a free interactive activity which your children can use as part of their lessons, or as additional work at home. - I’ve recently redesigned some of the pages on Teaching Ideas, to give everything a more consistent look. There is also a new ‘About This Idea’ box on each idea which gives you more information about the ideas and also allows you to share the content using delicious, Twitter and Facebook.
- I have decided to close the Teaching Forum. The forum wasn’t particularly busy and it took a considerable amount of time for me to manage… I would prefer to be spending this time making resources and adding new content to Teaching Ideas. If you’re looking for an alternative forum, I highly recommend that you join the Primary Teacher Resource Centre forum instead.
I am also developing a new section on Teaching Ideas, called…

In this section, all of the ideas and resources will be based around particular themes and topics. For each theme, there will be:
- Cross-curricular activity ideas,
- Free downloadable resources,
- Printables for your class displays,
- Examples of educational videos related to the theme,
- Links to other relevant sites.
At this stage, I’m planning the following topics:
- May 2010 – World Cup
- June 2010 – Myst
If you are able to contribute any ideas, resources or links for these themes, please email me.
Thank you,
Mark





