Here are five fantastic resources that I’ve found in my RSS subscriptions and Twitter streams this week:

1) Learning Chocolate (shared by Rosa Esteve) – This site is great for helping children to learn vocabulary related to a huge collection of different topics. Each topic has lots of different activities to help children learn and practise new words.

2) Stopover (shared by Anthony Evans) – This wonderful video could be used for lots of different Literacy activities. Could your pupils write some narration or speech? Could they write a recount of the story? Could they write a sequel / prequel for the animation? Can they think of vocabulary to describe the characters / locations etc?

Click here to view the embedded video.

3) Fungooms (shared by Sites4Primary) – This is a lovely site for young children, with funny characters, simple games, music, stories and more. I’m sure that lots of older children (and adults) will like it too!

4) Oxford Owl (shared by Peter Richardson) – This site is an amazing resource for teachers, parents and children. There are lots of ideas to help you support children’s reading, along with free resources and e-books. The Kids’ Barn section also has lots of games and online reading activities.

5) Knoword (shared by Tim Rylands) – This addictive game can be used to reinforce and extend language… clues are given and you have to enter the matching word within the time limit given. Could you play this in your classroom?

Which of these resources is your favourite?

learndirect has launched two FREE online storybooks to help families make the most of their time together and have fun while learning.

learndirect research has revealed that almost one in three parents admit to wanting to brush up on their basic English and maths to support their children’s learning and development. Backed by celebrity mum and Waterloo Road actress, Angela Griffin, the new storybooks “The Journey to Darkest Somewhere” and “The House of Scary Words” let kids become the lead characters and change details within the stories.

Here’s a video which gives more information about the project:

The books also encourage readers to use basic English language while they play, so kids and parents can learn together. The new storybooks are available at www.learndirect.co.uk/readtogether. Kids also have the chance to win a professionally printed version of their book. Entrants simply need to register their personal storybook on the website before 31 December 2009.

Roy the Zebra is a wonderful site, containing interactive games, stories and resources that have been developed to help emerging readers learn to read. The site can be used at school or at home.

www.roythezebra.com

There are worksheets, lesson plans and interactive activities to help children with their understanding of capital letters, full stops, words that rhyme, high frequency words, alphabetical order, question marks… and much more!

A fantastic resource for teachers of younger pupils, or older pupils who need extra support with reading and Literacy work.

If someone said ‘cool beans’ to you, how might you respond? If you were described as ‘teek’ would you be pleased or offended? Do you know what ‘CBA’ or ‘SDW’ stand for?

These terms are, according to this article from Guardian Education, some of the latest terms that teenagers used as part of their everyday conversation. As a teacher, are you aware of what they mean, and could you understand your students if they were to use these words in a class?

Take a look at the article to expand your vocabulary even further!

Image: ‘Not quite Sophie Beer‘