Teaching Themes – Space

This month’s Teaching Theme has now been released and all of the ideas and resources are about Space! The theme contains:

• Ideas for lessons and classroom activities,
• Resources to use for your class displays (with some wonderful new space cartoons),
• Educational videos to watch in your lessons,
• Examples of existing space-themed classroom displays for inspiration,
• Online games and apps for your pupils to use,
• Suggestions of places and maps which can be used as part of your space lessons,
• Links to other useful space websites.

I have also added a new section to the theme this month… Jokes! Kevin McLaughlin suggested having a selection of themed jokes on the page which can be used as a starter for lessons or just for fun! Thanks Kevin. I’m aiming to add a jokes section to all previous and future themes too so look out for those.

Find all of the themed resources (including previous themes) at www.teachingthemes.co.uk.

Next month’s theme is ‘Pirates’ and my wife has been busy drawing some wonderful pirate cartoons to use in the resources. I’m really looking forward to sharing them with you!

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?

I am really pleased to announce the availability of the second ‘Teaching Themes‘ section on my Teaching Ideas site. Last month’s World Cup theme was incredibly popular and the resources are all still online if you would like to use them. This month, the theme is Myst:

www.teachingideas.co.uk/themes/myst

The Myst series of computer games can be extremely valuable teaching tools and they are becoming incredibly popular in classrooms around the world, thanks to Tim Rylands. The characters, landscapes and storylines in the games can all be used to enhance learning in a wide range of curriculum areas. My new Teaching Theme area currently has more than 80 Myst-related teaching ideas, display resources, educational videos, online applications, photographs of classroom displays and links to other useful sites. I hope that the new theme will help you to use these wonderful games with your children.

We’ve already started working on next month’s theme, which is ‘Summer at the Seaside‘. If you have any ideas, resources or links which might be useful for the World Cup, Myst or Summer themes, please get in touch. Thank you!

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!