Travelling to Teach is an exciting summer travel programme aimed specifically at teachers interested in volunteering and teaching abroad. The project is currently looking for dedicated teachers who would like to use the opportunity to volunteer abroad to really change lives teaching English, Maths, Science, Art or Drama.

What’s involved?

The Travelling to Teach programme works with a number of charity/community schools in India, Nepal and Tanzania which provide education to children from some of the poorest backgrounds.

This is a three week long trip which will see selected volunteer teachers visit and work in a school in India, Nepal or Tanzania educating the local children and working with the existing teaching staff. The aim of the volunteering programme is to provide interactive and interesting lessons to the children, bringing amusement to their classes.

Here is a video where teachers share their experiences from previous trips.

The BBC’s School Report News Day takes place on Thursday 11th March. Is your school taking part?

For those who are new to the project, it aims to turn classrooms into newsrooms, giving children a chance to make the news. Pupils are given opportunities to make news reports about things that are important to them, through the radio, TV and online. You can find out more in this video which explains more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/school_report/

The BBC site has some useful links and resources for those planning to take part:

• Advice about getting ready for the day,
• Posters to decorate your newsroom,
• Reward certificates for those taking part.
• Suggestions for stories that the pupils could report on.
• A suggested timetable of activities.
• Lots of other resources for teachers.

The School Report site is an extremely useful resource for those taking part in the day, but lots of the content could also be used at other times of the year too.

Practical Action are a development charity who are offering lots of free resources for schools, linked to their work in helping some of the world’s poorest people to transform their lives for the better.

www.practicalaction.org.uk/education

The Education area of their site has a wide range of content for teachers and pupils, including:

• Videos showing how designers make their sustainable products (useful for DT).
• A sustainability handbook for teachers of Design and Technology.
• Free posters, homework activities, wordsearches, classroom activities, videos and songs linked to renewable energy.
• A selection of experiments, demonstrations and activities which can be used to support work linked to climate change.
• Cross-curricular videos and lesson activities.

My World in 60 Seconds is a film project for 11-14 year olds, set up by the Geographical Association, to create an alternative guide to our world, a guide that is created by you. The organisers want to re-present the world as people know it, so they are looking for young people to make short films that are thought provoking, insightful and engaging.

www.geography.org.uk/11-19/myworldin60seconds

60 seconds is just long enough to guide someone through part of your world, to show what it is really like for you. The best films can appear on BBC Big Screens across the country. A panel of judges will watch all the films and the ones that in their opinion best reflect what we are looking for could be shown. These films will also appear online as part of a guide to our world.

Find out more at the My World in 60 Seconds site.

Plan is one of the largest child-centred community development organisations in the world, helping children and their families in 48 of the poorest countries to break the cycle of poverty. In the countries where they work, one out of five children die before the age of five, and the ones who survive often go hungry and have no chance of learning to read and write.

www.plan-ed.org

Plan also offer a comprehensive site for teachers which offers free teaching resources, video clips, photos, fact sheets and more, all linked to the countries where they work. You can also find out about the projects that Plan are supporting, as well as find out how your school can support the work that they are doing.

Following on from my previous post about free teaching resources from My Money, the site has just announced two competitions for UK schools.

The competitions aim to get pupils engaged in personal finance education in an exciting way by combining their knowledge of personal finance with their opinions on the value and importance of money. They then produce a piece of artwork to represent their knowledge and opinions.

www.mymoneyonline.org

The competitions are supported by specially created lesson plans, which lead pupils from specific personal finance education curriculum learning materials into producing a competition entry.

Competition prizes include Nintendo DSs, iPod Touches, digital cameras, books, cash for schools and a private tour around the Bank of England and the British Museum! The closing date for the competition is 2nd April 2010.

Find out more on the My Money site.

The Health and Safety Executive is running a new campaign to reduce slips, trips and falls in the workplace. Throughout 2008-2009, across the Education sector in the UK, there were 948 major injuries and a further 1865 that resulted in workers having to take more than three days off work as a result of slips, trips and falls – resulting in costs in excess of £60million.

In response, the HSE has launched a new phase of its Shattered Lives campaign. As part of this, people can visit the Shattered Lives website for practical advice and guidance.

www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives

On the website, people can find out information on how they can easily reduce the risk of slips, trips and falls in the classroom and see what other organisations have done.  Advice ranges from how to deal with spills and other slip risks, to the importance of using ladders correctly to reduce the risk of falling from height.

Survival Rivals is offering free Science teaching resources to UK teachers of pupils aged between 11 and 19. Three kits are available:

• I’m a Worm, Get Me Out of Here – Discover what colour worms your local birds prefer.
• Brine Date – What do brine shrimp look for in a mate?
• The X Bacteria – Explore antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

www.survivalrivals.org.uk

A variety of online resources are also available and teachers can even enter a competition to take four students to the Galapagos Islands, allowing them to follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin.

Primary schools can sign up for the sister project, The Great Plant Hunt.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity are running a week of Peter Pan themed fundraising activities and a Guinness World Record attempt in aid of the charity. The week runs from 26th to 30th April and thousands of people will be taking part in the biggest ever Peter Pan dress up day on Friday 30th April.

www.gosh.org

Visit the site to register, find instructions about getting involved in the Guinness World Record attempt and download a fundraising toolkit for ideas to try during the week.

I came across Anithings at a visit to BETT a few weeks ago. It is a fantastic piece of software which allows children to create their own animations on screen. They can design their own characters and backgrounds or use the ones provided. Recording the animation simply involves pressing the record button and then animating the characters by moving them around.

Here are some demonstrations of how to use the software. The first shows how to make a simple animation:

This video shows some of the more advanced features, such as drawing tools, storyboards and speech bubbles.

Any animations created using the software can be posted online and then embedded into school websites or VLEs.

UPDATE – This offer is now closed.

The team at Anithings have kindly offered visitors to Teaching Ideas and Teaching News a 10% discount on any orders of the software during February. To receive this discount, simple quote ‘Teaching Ideas‘ or ‘Teaching News‘ when you place the order. Schools and teachers using either of these codes will also receive a pack of 90 Anithings stickers featuring characters from the program… great for a display or as a reward for children who create amazing animations with the software!