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, [...]

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 synonyms from [...]

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 [...]

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 (ake [...]

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.

Texts for IWB use (fiction and non-fiction)

Texts for IWB use (fiction and non-fiction)
tags: English.Non-fiction, English.Writing, Resources
26/3/08 – Useful collection of links to online texts that can be used ot support persusasion, recount, explanation, reports, narrative and poetry.

Everybody writes – Pie Corbett’s ideas for writing

Everybody writes – Pie Corbett’s ideas for writing
tags: English.Writing, Resources
2/3/08 – Creative inspiration, writing games, sentence games and creating creative games from stories.

MagazineFactory – make your own magazine

MagazineFactory – make your own magazine
tags: English.Writing, ICT, Resources
25/3/08 – Glossy look and plenty of features to create your own magazine. As it says, “a free tool for teachers and students to make their own web-magazines”.

Great resource for non-chronological reports

nonchronreport.pdf (application/pdf Object)
tags: english.non-fiction, english.writing, history, resources

16/3/08 – Great resource for Non-Chronological Reports. Very clear and simple.
– post by teachinglinks

ProCon.org – great site for finding both sides of an argument.

ProCon.org – Pros and Cons of Controversial Issues
tags: english.persuasion, english.writing, resources

15/3/08 – Great stuff: discusses both sides of tricky issues very well. Only some are suitable for primary-aged pupils and they should not use this website themselves.
– post by teachinglinks

Wordplay Grammar Clinic

Wordplay© grammar clinic Annotated
tags: english.sentence.level, english.word.level

Common mistakes in English grammar,
and the simple rules that will keep you on track.

Free Teaching Resources
tags: ks1, resources

10 Unique Insects, Sun Trek (Facts on the sun)

Succeed With This » 10 Unique Insects
tags: english.nonfiction, english.writing, resources
Welcome to Sun|trek Annotated
tags: english.nonfiction, english.writing, resources, science.space

Welcome to Sun|trek. Take a journey into space and find out more about the star on your doorstep, the place it holds in our universe and how it plays an important part in our lives.

Rememble, MFL, Newspaper Template, Truancy Fact

Rememble Annotated
tags: ict, ict.tools, resources

Rememble is a ‘washing line’ for your digital bits and pieces. Thread together texts, photos,videos, sounds, scribbles, scans,notes, tweets… so they’re not drifting in a digital wasteland.

The Language Investigator Annotated
tags: languages, resources

This site is aimed at Primary School teachers who are interested introducinga multilingual dimension into their lessons.

“Roll the [...]