Resources Comic Relief
Primary schools can get help with their plans for Red Nose Day 2013 after Comic Relief issued a new set of fundraising resource packs. Red Nose Day takes place on March 15 next year and the free packs are available to order now. The packs include activity ideas, fundraising tips, balloons, stickers and posters, plus an order form for the new-look Red Noses. Curriculum-linked learning ideas are also included. Last Red Nose Day, schools and early years groups around the country raised £8.8 million. The money is helping to support people living incredibly tough lives both at home in the UK and across Africa.
• Visit
www.rednoseday.com/resourcepack Sing Up & Oxfam Mencap Spellathon
Mencap’s spelling competition, Spellathon, is offering more than 10,000 words for pupils to spell and all linked to the current national curriculum. The free online competition helps children to improve their spelling through a range of interactive games featuring animated bees voiced by Stephen Fry and actress Jodie Whittaker. Run by
Mencap, the Spellathon is linked to in-school fundraising on behalf of the learning disability charity. A range of free teaching resources and packs are available and there is an online leaderboard that allows schools to see how they are doing against other schools nearby. There is a £10,000 cash prize for the school that raises the most amount of money, per head of participating pupils, while all schools receive a 25 per cent refund on the total money they raise.
• The Spellathon starts on October 10 and schools can register in advance at
www.spellathon.net
Link2Learn
Prizes of up to £5,000 are being offered for the winners of the 2012 Link2Learn challenge. Open to any UK school involved in the British Council’s International School Award, the prize money is intended to help schools celebrate and further develop the creative and innovative international dimensions of teaching and learning. In statements 900 words or fewer, primary schools should describe and provide evidence of the long-term impact that their international school partnership(s) have had. The deadline for entries is October 19.
• Visit
http://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/International-School- Award/Link2Learn
Teach Your Monster to Read
Teach Your Monster to Read is a free, fun interactive online game that helps children practise and consolidate the essential first stages of reading.
The game, which features the voice of Simon Farnaby from BBC’s Horrible Histories, is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the
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A new key stage 2 resource has been published by Sing Up and Oxfam to help pupils explore global issues. The free, downloadable pack, entitled Classroom concerts, global discovery, focuses on the theme of food and small-scale farming across the world, using music to explore this in a creative way. The resource has been designed to meet the recommendations of the National Plan for Music Education and the government’s call for every school to have a “singing strategy”. It supports the practice of singing as a classroom activity, enabling teachers to integrate music into lessons in an inclusive way and ensuring every child sings and performs regularly.
Each song is presented with extension activities that raise awareness and support citizenship education. Included is the accompanying sheet music, a step-by-step guide to learning the song, links to the curriculum, plus links to online audio files and backing tracks on the Sing Up or Oxfam websites (users will need to sign up as a Sing Up friend to access the pack – this is free of charge to do).
• Visit
www.singup.org and
www.oxfam.org.uk/education
Photo: Zainabu Jalloh (right) takes part in singing activities during class at Early Learning School in Monrovia, Liberia (Aubrey Wade/Oxfam GB)
Pet education
The UK’s key pet charities and organisations, including RSPCA, Blue Cross, Guide Dogs, and Cats Protection, have launched a free website for anyone interested in educating children and young people about the various aspects of animal care. This makes searching for pet information simpler, since the website gives access to all of their resources in one place. The website includes: links to free downloadable resources, including lesson plans, posters, assembly packs, films and games; an interactive map which makes arranging an educational talk or visit to a pet establishment easier; and a pet calendar with related web links, so you can keep up-to-date with what’s happening in the animal world. This is handy if you are looking for a theme to teach around. Upcoming events include Puppy Awareness Week and Discover Dogs.
• Visit
www.peteducationresources.co.uk
teaching sequence in the “Letters and Sounds” programme. It develops children’s speed and accuracy of letter recognition and is aimed at beginner readers, both those who are on track and those who need support. Children can create their own accounts, and the game saves automatically.
The game starts off by the user being able to personalise their own monster, followed by a video about the monster crashing its spaceship on a mysterious island. The user is then taken through a magical world where they meet Island Kings, collect letters to win prizes and fix the broken spaceship. There are many different activities that can be completed, such as putting sheep in the correctly lettered pen, or building a spaceship. Teach Your Monster to Read is adaptive, so children are given more opportunity to practise the graphemes they struggle with, while it tracks their progress.
• Visit
www.teachyourmonstertoread.com
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