Over the past few weeks, I’ve been creating lots of new resources to share on Teaching Ideas. Some of these include:

Writing Inspirations – These images and questions can be used to provide ideas and inspiration for writing in your classroom. They could be used as a lesson starter to develop the children’s imaginations, or as part of writing activities in the main part of your lessons.

Science Inspirations – These resources are similar to the writing inspiration series, but for Science! They could be used to trigger discussions about the particular scientific topics, to review existing knowledge or to introduce new topics to the pupils.

I would love to hear your feedback about these ‘Inspirations’ resources, as I’m am very happy to make some more… to add to the current Writing and Science collections and / or for new subject areas.

Numbers to 20 in French, German and Spanish - If you would like bigger numbers, or similar sets in different languages, please let me know!

As Teaching Ideas continues to grow, I’m also adding new sets of contents pages to organise the resources more clearly. Don’t forget that you can follow the Teaching Ideas RSS feed or join my mailing list to get the latest updates to the site. Thank you!

CILT, the National Centre for Languages is running a Primary Teachers’ Project, which gives teachers a chance to spend two weeks in France, Germany or Spain next spring topping up on their language skills and picking up new teaching ideas.

Image – Arc de Triomphe

Teachers spend one week in intensive language and methodology workshops and one week on a work shadowing placement in a primary school. Funding worth up to 2,500 euros is available from the British Council and the deadline for funding applications is Friday 5th November. To find out more, visit CILT’s Primary Teachers’ Project webpage.

Here is a selection of some interesting and educational things that I’ve found recently, via my Twitter network:

• Zooburst – This amazing site lets you make your own 3D augmented reality pop up books (via @relativism, @xannov and @ianaddison).

• Application for Headship - Information and advice for those who need to write a letter of application when applying for a headship (via @andyross75).
• World Atlas Maps – A large collection of blank maps which are very useful for your Geography lessons (via @simonhaughton).
• Becta Archive – The official archive of the Becta website. Use this site to access the useful resources when the Becta site disappears (via @daibarnes).
• Hello Bonjour Hola – A site containing resources for teaching and learning French and Spanish (via @dawnhallybone and @valleseco)

• SchoolToons – Resources to support animation work in the classroom at KS2-4 (via @DrJoolz).
• Tips for New Tweeters – @stuartridout gives some useful advice for those who have just started to use Twitter.
• Year 5 Control Technology Plans – A set of plans, from @simonhaughton, which include the use of Scratch.
• Literacy with ICT (PDF) (from www.edu.gov.mb.ca) - A handbook for parents about using ICT to support learning in Literacy. See the document below (discovered via @TechnologyToday)

Don’t miss Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 in this series! Do you use Twitter? What have you discovered recently?

Image – Montreal Twestival 2009 Cupcakes

Frontier is working with Edexcel to offer a new TEFL programme – The BTEC Advanced Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. This is a customised course which is accredited by Edexcel as a level 3 qualification.

Volunteers taking part on Frontier’s teaching projects for 4 weeks or more are able to sign up for this qualification which combines self-study, an intensive training weekend and practical work experience in a foreign country. On completion of the placement, volunteers submit a portfolio which is assessed and then verified by Edexcel.

If you’re interested in finding out more, visit Frontier’s site.

EducationApps have been busy building lots of new iPhone and iPod Touch apps for use in education. Here are some of their latest additions:

• Ultimate Times Tables – A fun way for children of all ages to learn their times tables. This has four different types of tests and allows up to five users to save their results.

• French GCSE Revision – This is an interactive way to help students revise their French GCSE vocabulary, with tests, flash cards and a built in dictionary. Watch the app in action with the video below:

EducationApps have developed a number of other applications so look at their site to see their other developments.

MyFrenchResources is an extremely valuable site for teachers of KS3, KS4 and KS5 French. It is full of downloadable resources, all clearly organised by year group and topic. Lots of the KS3 resources might also be useful for older KS2 students.

www.myfrenchresources.com

The site’s Welcome page, also has some useful display and assembly resources for teachers to use. Take a look!

The countdown to Sport Relief 2010 kicks off this month with the launch of exciting, free education resources for primary, secondary and early years groups. The resources, spanning the English, physical education and citizenship curriculums, bring alive the stories of young people in the UK and overseas. Sport Relief’s School Kits are available to order for free at www.sportrelief.com/schools. The kits provide teachers with all the tools they need to get set to ‘Rise to the Challenge’ and inspire their students to get active to help some of the world’s poorest people, both at home in the UK and overseas.

Sport Relief’s free to order resources range from lesson and assembly plans to photos, videos and real stories about children and young people supported by Sport Relief funded projects.

Sportacus, from BBC’s LazyTown is back to excite and inspire early years groups with a host of learning ideas. Early years kits will also include a full colour story book, helping children to understand the differences between their lives and those of other children around the world.

For primary and secondary schools, Sport Relief offers English, PE and citizenship lesson ideas and resources for key stages one to four, including lesson plans and activities that will get students thinking like journalists, with a dedicated area on www.sportrelief.com/schools for them to upload their reports on the issues affecting them in their communities, for all to see.

Get Your Socks on for Sport Relief with the Sport Relief Sock Deposit Scheme for schools. An easy way for schools to fundraise, simply pay a deposit for an order of Sport Relief stripy socks from the website and sell the socks in your school. For every pair of Sport Relief socks ordered through the Sock Deposit Scheme, Sainsbury’s is kindly giving one Active Kids voucher to the school. The Sport Relief sock will also be available to buy in UK Sainsbury’s stores for £2.

The Sport Relief fundraising campaign kicks off in January, when schools will be able to find a wealth of ideas to inspire kids of all ages to rise to the challenge and raise money for Sport Relief.

Important date for your diary – 19^th March 2010: Sport Relief Friday across schools in the UK kicks off the Sport Relief weekend of fundraising fun!

There has been a big leap in the number of primary schools teaching children foreign languages.

Minister for Schools and Learners Jim Knight welcomed news that 84% of primary schools now teach children another language, up from 70% on the previous year and nearly double the 44% in 2002.

Research from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) published today shows that traditional languages dominate, with French being most popular (89% of schools which teach languages) followed by Spanish (23%) and German (9%). But a small number (under 3%) offer Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Urdu.

Lord Dearing in his major review of languages in 2007 recommended that languages become a statutory part of the primary curriculum, building on the existing entitlement for all primary pupils to learn a language in class time by 2010.

He wanted to make languages compulsory in primary schools so that all pupils learn languages for a minimum of seven years. He believed that learning languages earlier will inspire children with a love of languages and motivate them to continue learning languages post-14.

Just thought you might be interested to know that the French program I recommended a few weeks ago is on a time-limited special offer. If you are thinking of learning French, or if you have to learn it and hate using text books, a CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) approach might work better for you, as it engages all the senses in a more holistic learning experience. Check out http://www.rocketlanguages.co.uk/french if you’re interested.

From around the middle, to the end of last year, I posted quite extensively about the choice to teach French rather than Spanish at primary school. I won’t go back over the reasons, as they are there to read, but the fact remains, no matter what argument anyone puts forward in favour of teaching a language other than French, most schools will opt to teach French regardless.

Therefore, realistically, I know I should be posting about ways in which learning French can be made easier, especially for non-linguists. Fortunately, modern technology can offer us a far more pleasurable and rewarding experience than we might have had at school in an intimidating chalk & talk environment.

I have been looking at several courses, and I think I have found one that can really help non-linguists learn French, or improve their existing knowledge the easiest way possible. The real benefit from this course is that it mkes use of multiple learning modalities allowing for many more learning opportunities than might otherwise be available in the traditional language classroom, or with text-book and tape courses. It is the best example of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) in use that I have seen so far. You can find out more at the Rocket Languages website, which also offers similar courses in Spanish, German and Japanese.