Children and classes around the UK are invited to write a short story and enter it into the BBC’s 500 Words writing competition. Winners will receive a large collection of books for themselves (and for their school library) and the site has lots of writing tips to help children create an amazing short story.

Teachers and librarians throughout the UK are also invited to volunteer their time to help whittle this year’s submissions down to a shortlist, which will then be judged by some a team of popular authors. Entry to the competition is open to persons aged 13 years and under on the 1st March 2012 who are living in the UK. Children can submit their story using this form. Good luck!

Clicker, a literacy support tool from Crick Software, is currently used in over 90% of UK primary schools. It helps pupils to achieve reading and writing success and the latest version, Clicker 6, is about to be launched at BETT 2012.

A key focus for Clicker 6 is independent learning. The new Quick-Start Screen enables pupils to work on activities straight away without teacher assistance, whilst built-in support tools like the updated speech feedback and new word predictor enable them to overcome learning barriers that would previously have prevented them from putting great ideas into writing.

Clicker 6 also has new activity wizards which guide teachers through the activity creation process, automatically transforming their content into Clicker Sets, and makes tailoring these activities to pupils’ needs quicker and easier.

For further details on Clicker 6, visit Crick Software on stand F40 at BETT 2012, where you can also find out about exclusive upgrade discounts. You can also visit Crick Software’s site for more information.

I get to watch lots of online videos in my search for new additions to my Teaching Videos site. The site now has almost 2,500 educational videos, so I thought that I would share some of my favourites… the most inspirational… the most incredible… the most beautiful… and the most entertaining. Here they are:

1) Try to Do – This wonderful video tells a great story about a baby squirrel who tries to climb a big wall. It is a fantastic way of encouraging children to think about perseverance and determination, as well as exploring ways of helping others.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2) I’ll Be Gone - This video could be used to discuss how sounds and music are made… watch the rhythm of each sound played out in the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3) Steve Spangler Science – Steve has a huge collection of online videos which teach Science in very exciting ways. Lots of his experiments can be tried at home or in the classroom, but some (like the one below) are definitely not appropriate!

Click here to view the embedded video.

4) Landscapes: Volume Two – This is a beautiful video which features stunning time-lapse video of landscapes in Arizona and Utah. It would be great for inspiring descriptive writing about settings and locations.

Click here to view the embedded video.

5) The Water Cycle stop motion – I love stop-motion animations and we make lots of them at school too. This video is a great animation about the water cycle which is perfect for Science lessons:

Click here to view the embedded video.

6) The Balloon Lady - Can you write a story about the Balloon Lady? Why is she so cheerful? How does it make the other people feel to be given a balloon? What happens to the balloons after the end of the film?

Click here to view the embedded video.

7) Kuroshio Sea – This looks incredible in full-screen HD on an interactive whiteboard. I’ve shown this to classes a number of times and the reaction is always ‘WOW!’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

8 ) The Highwayman – Lots of schools use ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes as part of their Literacy lessons and this animated video is a great accompaniment for any work using the book. Don’t forget that there are more teaching ideas linked to The Highwayman on my Teaching Library site.

Click here to view the embedded video.

9) Test Your Awareness – This extremely popular video is a great test of children’s observation skills!

Click here to view the embedded video.

10) Haerskogen – These amazing little creatures could be used in the classroom in lots of ways. Can your children write a description of them, or a story about their lives? Could they design their own creatures in Art, DT or ICT? Could you use them in Science for work on habitats and adaptation?

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your favourite online videos?

Spellathon is a new and exciting, sponsored spelling competition which aims to take over the world, while raising funds for learning disability charity Mencap. Entrants pledge a target number of words to spell correctly whilst practicing ahead of the online global championships to be held in March 2012. All words spelt correctly, are “banked” in your hive and your scores are displayed on the global leader board.

The competition is set in a futuristic digital universe and is presented by ‘The Professor’, a 3D bee character voiced by Stephen Fry. Spellathon can be played anywhere, by anyone – children, students, and adults of any age! You can register now at www.spellathon.net.

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?

The Book Club offer a great service for schools, helping them to find and buy books quickly and easily. Schools are able to send them a list of the books that they need and The Book Club will organise a quote (with a 10% discount on all books), source the books from the publishers and deliver them free to schools. Their site also has lots of useful lists of suggested books, which are all organised by age group and subject area / topic.

Take a look at their schools page for more information or browse around their site to find some relevant books for your current topics. You can also follow their book suggestions on Facebook and Twitter. The Book Club have also kindly offered to support my new Teaching Library site, enabling me to continue adding new books on a regular basis.

Write Path is an exciting Literacy event that takes place in October. The event started in 2008 and is organised by Bev Humphrey, an independent literacy and technology consultant. Schools who take part in the project will be able to take part in different writing activities, including an opportunity to complete stories that have been started by authors, special poetry day activities and awards to win.

There is a charge of £50 for participation but all schools that take part are sent a copy of the project’s specially published book that their students’ writing appears in. You can find out more about Write Path by visiting their Ning site or by contacting Bev by email. You can also get advice from those who have already taken part by browsing through the posts in the forum.

Here are five great new resources that I have discovered online this week:

1) 100 Most Beautiful Words (shared by @LibWithAttitude) – This list of 100 beautiful words was chosen by Robert Beard, who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. It’s a great selection of vocabulary which can be used in a number of ways. You could ask children to try and guess the meaning… or work out how to spell each word… or make flashcards which will help people to remember the definition / spelling… or use it as a starting point for discussing the children’s own favourite words.

2) Red Riding Mood – There are lots of great Internet Safety videos and resources online and I’ve recently discovered a series of three new videos from Facemoods. They highlight key safety messages for people to remember when using Facebook so they are probably more relevant for older pupils (although lots of younger children also seem to have Facebook accounts, despite their Terms of Service stating that under 13s should not join).

Click here to view the embedded video.

3) 25 Superb Optical Illusions (shared by Larry Ferlazzo) – These fantastic optical illusions are perfect for use in the classroom. Can your children see all of the illusions straight away? Can they explain how they work?

4) Online Storytime (recommended by 2sparkley) – This wonderful site has videos of famous stories being read aloud. The stories are all popular books and the videos show the original illustrations. You can also embed the videos, so they could be posted on a school website to share with your pupils and their parents.

5) Polyphonic Kids (created by Chris Leach) – Chris has created this blog to introduce children to a wide range of music… from different styles and artists. It’s a great place to share a variety of music with your pupils. They can also add comments to share their opinions or vote in the poll on each day’s post.

What have you discovered recently?

Here are five great new resources that I’ve found online this week:

1) Quadblogging  - David Mitchell has set up Quadblogging as a way of encouraging pupils to publish online and comment on each other’s work. Lots of schools have already signed up and you can too! It’s a great idea and you can find out more about it in the Youtube video here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

2) Worldometers (shared by Dominic Tremblay) – This site shows lots of statistics about the world, which change in real-time. It’s fascinating (but slightly scary) to see some of the numbers rising so rapidly and it would be great for looking at data handling or geography / environmental work.

3) Plot Device – This video was featured on Tom Barrett’s blog. It’s a fantastic story, covering a range of genres, which could be used in a huge variety of ways in the classroom. Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

4) Animaps (shared by Malcolm Wilson) – This site lets you create animated maps for free. Could you use it to report on a school trip somewhere, to retell a historical event or to tell a story about a fantastic journey?

5) Comix – Danny Nicholson wrote a blog post about this great comic creation tool, which is aimed at younger children. The rest of the site has lots of other tools which could be used in the classroom too.

If you’ve found something useful recently, please consider sharing it in the comments. Thank you

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!