I recently set up a new site to accompany my existing collection of Teaching Websites. The new site is called Teaching Events and is a place where you can find:

• Events which could be used as a starting point for a range of classroom activities.
• Conferences, exhibitions and shows which teachers can attend for their own professional development.

www.teachingevents.co.uk

Followers of Teaching Ideas on Twitter and Facebook have already had a sneak preview of the site and the response so far has been extremely positive. I would love to hear your feedback if you are able to look at the site. I would also like to hear about any events that you already use in your classroom:

• Special days, birthdays and anniversaries which you already use as a starting point for school / class activities,
• Charity events which schools can get involved with,
• Professional development events which other teachers might be interested in.

Please email me with the details of any events or use the form on the site. Thank you!

I am planning to add new events as I discover them and build the site into a useful calendar of educational events for schools and teachers. I hope that you like it!

Alan McKinney from SoundScalpel has kindly contributed a large collection of sound effects to Teaching Ideas. You can download these sounds and use them in your classroom for:

• Adding atmosphere to lessons,
• Assemblies,
• School performances,
• Adding sound to children’s ICT / multimedia work,
• Addition to a school website / VLE.

www.teachingideas.co.uk/english/dramasoundeffects.htm

I’ve also recently discovered www.freesfx.co.uk which has lots of free sound effects which you can also use.

www.freesfx.co.uk

What are your favourite sound effect resources? How do you use them in the classroom?

Here are links to some of the most popular Teaching Ideas, News, Videos and Photos on my websites recently:

• World Cup Ideas and Resources – A large collection of lesson ideas, videos, display material and other resources, to support the use of the World Cup in the classroom.
• Creative Writing – A collection of starting points for creative writing.
• The 100 Square – Use the 100 square to find patterns by colouring in certain squares.
• How many squares on a chessboard? – An enjoyable Maths investigation, which requires logical thinking in order to find the correct answer.
• Ordering the Planets – Can you remember the correct order of the planets? Use these handy tricks to help you!

• Blank Top Trumps Cards – Free resources to help you create your own Top Trumps cards in the classroom.
• Classroom Displays – Discover a site to inspire your own classroom displays.
• iPhone and iPod apps for schools – A collection of applications to use in your lessons.
• Mr. Thorne’s Phonics Videos – Look at these wonderful educational phonics videos for young children.
• Myst Ideas and Resources – An announcement about the release of lots of ideas to support the use of the Myst games in the classroom.

• South African World Cup 2010 – A video made by the South African people when they won the World Cup 2010 Bid.
• Wavin’ Flag – The official theme song for the FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010, by the somalian artist K’naan.
• Fifa World Cup Soccer City – Find out about Soccer City, the venue that will take centre stage during the World Cup finals in South Africa.
• Persuasive Advert KS2 – A persuasive advert which can be used as part of Literacy lessons in KS2.
• The Highwayman – Watch an animated version of the popular poem.

• Designing Games – A display showing children’s ICT work as part of a topic about the creation of computer games.
• Adjectives and Adverbs – Sharing children’s suggestions of adjectives and adverbs, created using WordArt and clipart.
• 3D Shapes – A selection of 3D shapes, made by pupils, along with questions to review their understanding.
• Reading Chart – A chart on which the children move their names, to show how many times they have read at home.
• Colour Mixing – What happens when you mix different colours? Find out in this colourful display!

I’ve published July’s Teaching Theme a few days early, so that it can be used in the last few weeks of the summer term here in the UK. The theme is called ‘Summer at the Seaside‘ and it contains an enormous collection of ideas, resources, display material, photos, videos, links, places and maps… all linked to the summer and seaside topics.

This is our biggest Teaching Theme yet, with over 100 ideas, resources and links for you to explore and I’ve already had lots of wonderful comments from visitors. I must say a HUGE thank you to my wife who has drawn the amazing images on many of the display resources. I’m sure that they will look fantastic in your classroom!

I’ve now started getting ready for August’s theme – Space! If you have any resources or suggestions for any of these themes, please get in touch!

The World Cup has now started and lots of schools are using the event as a starting point for their lessons. Here are links to a selection of my favourite World Cup resource sites:

• Teaching Ideas – This is my own collection of lesson ideas, resources, display material, videos, links and more, which also includes lots of contributions from other teachers. This page is currently the most popular one on Teaching Ideas!

• Primary Resources – As always, Primary Resources, offers a huge collection of wonderful resources for you to explore.
• Communication4All – Bev Evans makes amazing Powerpoint presentations and display resources and she freely shares them on her website. This is well worth a look!
• TES – Lots of teachers contribute to the resource library at TES Connect, making it a great place to search if you’re looking for World Cup resources.
• Literacy Trust – Download lots of free World Cup resources from the Literacy Trust. You can also read a new chapter of a football story each day.
• TeachersTV – The team at TeachersTV have created this useful collection of videos and resources, linked to South Africa and the World Cup.

• International Education Sunderland – Clare Seccombe has produced this amazing site which has loads of freely downloadable content to use in your classroom. Thanks Clare!
• BBC – The BBC have lots of World Cup resources, including football training videos, class video clips about children in South Africa and an interactive wall chart and team tracker.

These are the sites that I will be using most over the coming weeks. What are your favourite World Cup resource sites?

Here are links to some of the most popular Teaching Ideas, News, Videos and Photos on my websites recently:

• Limericks – Learn about limericks! Contains lots of examples and suggested activities.
• Prime Numbers – A clear set of instructions to help you identify prime numbers.
• Number Square Patterns – A set of resource sheets and activities which children can use to identify patterns on a 1-100 number square.
• Shapes – Five popular worksheets to help children learn about 2D shapes.
• World Cup Teaching Resources – A huge collection of ideas, resources, display material, videos and links to help you use the World Cup in your teaching.

• New Primary Curriculum Online – Three months after being published, the site now states that ‘the content on this site may not reflect current Government policy.’
• BBC Learning Zone Class Clips – Information about the BBC’s Broadband Class Clips which you can use in your classrooms.
• Communication 4 All – Linking to a wonderful resource site from Bev Evans.
• Functional Skills – An article which explains about the new functional skills qualifications.
• ICT Games – A guide to some of the wonderful games and resources on James Barrett’s fantastic site.

• Persuasive Advert (KS2) – A persuasive advert for KS2 which was created for an interview observed lesson but can now be used by other teachers too.
• The Highwayman – An animated version of the poem ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes.
• Phonics Song – A phonics song to help children learn the letter sounds.
• Rocks and Soils Song – A useful video to help children find out about different types of rocks and soil.
• The Battle of Marathon – Part 1 of a historical documentary from the History Channel about the Athenian’s legendary victory over the Persians.

• Bones – A wonderful display giving information about the skeleton and bones found within the body.
• Jack and the Beanstalk – A fantastic role play area, for early years classrooms, based on the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
• Colour Mixing – What happens when you mix different colours? Find out in this colourful display!
• Adjectives and Adverbs – Children thought of a huge selection of adjectives and adverbs and used WordArt to make colourful versions of their words for this display.
• Healthy Schools – A display which celebrates a school’s Healthy Schools Award.

I am really pleased to announce that the new ‘Teaching Themes‘ section on my Teaching Ideas site is now open. The first theme is based on next month’s Football World Cup and I have been busy making lots of resources linked to the topic.

www.teachingideas.co.uk/themes/worldcup

Teachers can find a selection of World Cup teaching ideas, display resources, educational videos, photographs of classroom displays and links to other related sites. There are also lots of cartoon images, drawn by my wife, which you can use during lessons or as part of classroom displays.

Many thanks to Simon and Mary who first suggested the topic and to other teachers who have shared ideas or resources for this new section. If you have any ideas / resources linked to the World Cup, please consider contributing them and I will add them to the theme’s page.

This the first theme in my new ‘Teaching Themes‘ area… next month, the theme will be based around the use of the game Myst to support learning across the curriculum.

I hope that Teaching Themes is useful to you. If you have any more ideas (or suggestions for future themes), please get in touch. Thank you!

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…

www.teachingthemes.co.uk

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. Also, if you have any ideas for future themes, please complete my short survey.

Thank you,

Mark

Doug Belshaw has started a wonderful new way of sharing teaching tips via Twitter. His idea, called ‘Move Me On’, involves teachers sharing a simple tip or idea in 140 characters by posting it on Twitter with the hashtag #movemeon. At the time of writing this, there are 490 tips in the collection!

You can read more about the idea on Doug’s site, or follow the rest of the ideas at TwapperKeeper. Doug is planning to publish an e-book containing all of the contributed ideas, so follow his blog to find out when this has been published.

Here are links to some of the most popular ideas on Teaching Ideas over the past few months:

1. The Hundred Square (Maths) – Use the 100 square to find patterns by colouring in certain squares.
2. Story Plans (Literacy) – Two free worksheets which children can use when planning their stories.
3. Story Settings (Literacy) – A fantastic resource which encourages children to describe settings without telling the reader directly.
4. Millionaire Place Value Game (Maths) – A competition between the teacher and pupils which develops understanding of place value.
5. Feelings Flowers (Art) – A wonderful way of encouraging children to think about their feelings.
6. The Skeleton (Science) – A handy worksheet on which children have to identify different parts of the skeleton.
7. Place Value Clap (Maths) – A brilliant method of getting children to think about place value.
8. Decimal Number Lines (Maths) – Three number lines which children can refer to during their work on decimals.
9. Place Value Hats (Maths) – Use this excellent idea to develop children’s understanding of place value.
10. Fill in the Punctuation (Literacy) – Children need to put the correct punctuation into a piece of text.

What is your favourite teaching idea? Send your ideas and I will add them to the site as soon as I can. Thank you