Inspiring Videos as Visual Writing Prompts | The Tech Savvy Educator

Inspiring Videos as Visual Writing Prompts | The Tech Savvy Educator 07/10/2011 – Some stunning visuals for setting and description.

20 Gadgets That Innovate Ordinary Things

20 Gadgets That Innovate Ordinary Things 28/09/2011 – photographs and short explanations of real – bizarre and unusual inventions, together with some new takes on old ideas.

Cheeseburger Brown: Wile – The Unauthorized Biography of Wile E. Coyote

Cheeseburger Brown: Wile – The Unauthorized Biography of Wile E. Coyote 18/09/2011 – “The sun is high and hot. Impossible rock sculptures tower over the desert floor, casting short purple shadows on the scrub and cacti. An insect chirps. A trail of speeding smoke appears at the horizon, tearing along the highway with reckless abandon. [...]

How to Make Chocolate Ice-cream Cups Using Balloons – Funny Mike

How to Make Chocolate Ice-cream Cups Using Balloons – Funny Mike 18/09/2011 – Great series of photographs, ideal for adding text / drama such as freeze frame or mime.

Teaching Library – Discover teaching ideas linked to books

Teaching Library | Discover teaching ideas and lesson resources linked to children’s books and literature. 29/08/2011 – Superb idea!  Mark Warner (Teaching Ideas) has created a repository of inspiring ideas linked to a growing range of popular and engaging books. There are suggestions for English, together with plenty of cross-curricular links. Great stuff.

THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY: Top 9 Strange Streets in the World

THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY: Top 9 Strange Streets in the World 22/08/2011 – There are some great images on the actual site – go there to see them! The streets would be superb for  inspiring some creative writing about setting. ” Shortest Street in the World , Ebenezer Place – Scotland photo source Ebenezer Place, in [...]

FutureMe.org: Write a Letter to the Future

FutureMe.org: Write a Letter to the Future 16/08/2011 – An idea for the start of the year / writing in role as a fictional character.

APP Writing Child Speak | blakeleys.com

APP Writing Child Speak | blakeleys.com 07/06/2010 – Ronseal!

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus 18/6/09 – Great way of showing links between word groups and synonyms. Fully interactive and colourful.

Most Dangerous Bridges In The World

Most Dangerous Bridges In The World 15/5/09 – High-quality images of rickety bridges in a range of different places around the world. I will use this page of over 20 pages for describing settings in narrative.

Switch Zoo – Animal Games

Switch Zoo – Animal Games 19/4/09 – “Photorealistic zoo”. Make your own new animals, play animal games and puzzles. Learn about animals. Build animal habitats. Superb site for habitats or as a writing stimulus. The site even offers lesson plans.

Figures of Speech – Teach a Kid to Argue

Figures of Speech – Teach a Kid to Argue 19/4/09 – “How to Teach a Child to Argue. Why would any sane parent teach his kids to talk back? Because, this father found, it actually increased family harmony.” This could have great application in P4C / thinking skills, or just conflict resolution. Essentially, it focuses [...]

Vocabulary Game

This is from my TES post on the same theme. ——————————————————————————————- An idea popped into my head and I would appreciate suggestions as to how I might improve it. I thought about calling it “Top that” or something similar. The idea would be to teach children both synonyms and degrees/shades of meaning. Children would collect [...]

Top 10 Time-Lapse Videos Show Nature at Work | Wired Science from Wired.com

Top 10 Time-Lapse Videos Show Nature at Work | Wired Science from Wired.com 29/3/09 – This will be particularly useful for discussion of life cycles and as a writing stimulus. Clips include: snowstorm, eclipse, corn growing, caterpillars turning into butterflies, earth rise, a rotting apple, a thunder storm, the Northern Lights, and a firestorm.

EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing

EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing 17/3/09 – Up to 8 users can collaborate on a document in real time. This free-to-use website could be fantastic for shared writing, brainstorming or ICT Club.

DeadDog » 100 Weird Facts About the Human Body

DeadDog » 100 Weird Facts About the Human Body 9/11/08 – With a small amount of editing, this will be a very interesting addition to lessons on the human body or non-chronological reports / explanation texts.

Imagination Prompt Generator

Imagination Prompt Generator 1/11/08 – Creative writing starter ideas; some may not be appropriate for unfiltered use in the classroom. Worth looking at though…

VCOP Teacher

VCOP Teacher 10/10/08 – Written by one of the major contributors to the TES staff forum and a “Big Writing” expert, this blog has plenty of ideas for improving writing.

“Why Is The Sky Blue?” and other questions

Why Is The Sky Blue 30/7/08 – An entertaining and informative website which answers the above question and many others. I will use modified versions of these when teaching explanation and information texts.

911 Writers Block

911 Writers Block 20/7/08 – “Dial 1 for Settings / Dial 2 for Characters / Dial 3 for Dramatic Entrances / Dial 4 for Dialogue / Dial 5 to Commiserate / Dial 6 for Verbs / Dial 7 for Calisthenics / Dial 8 to Kill a Character / Dial 9 for Endings” Many of these [...]

Key Features of Writing Genres

Key Features of Writing Genres 31/5/08 – Diary, discussion, autobiography, letters, narrative and short story. Useful for creating marking / self evaluation ladders and success criteria. You’ll also find some downloadable writing frames.

Wild Sanctuary Habitat / Animal Sound Recordings

Wild Sanctuary 30/5/08 – Searchable by continent and region – great stuff. “Wild Sanctuary is home to the largest private archive of natural sound, anywhere! Our worldwide collection represents over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species.” Great for Geography, Science and as writing stimulus.

KS2 Sentence Games

KS2 Sentence Games 27/4/08 – Sentence laboratory (Experiment with writing sentences when given 1, 2 or 3 starting words. The 1 and 2 word games are good for reinforcing the use of capital letters and full stops. The 3 word option gives you the opportunity to work on the accurate use of conjunctions), Sentence Magic [...]

Plot and Character Generator

Plot and Character Generator 20/4/08 – Gives randomised charcters and events for creative writing stimulus. I won’t use this with children because some of the scenarios might elicit too many awkward questions. I will probably collate the more relevant and appropriate ones at home. Looks good though!

MagazineFactory

MagazineFactory 20/4/08 – Free, high quality tool for creating magazines. You can also view examples made by other people/groups.