Teaching Ideas News

Display Photos Back Online!

2008-04-19T09:47:00.001+01:00

I have now completed the transfer to a new photo system, so Display Photos is back online.

There are hundreds of displays, ideas and tips online, so I hope that they are useful. If you would like to contributed a display of your own, please email it to me. Thanks!

Display Photos

2008-04-15T16:22:00.001+01:00

Display Photos is currently offline.

Having experienced a number of technical problems with the site over the past week, I have decided to move to a new gallery system. I am currently testing the new system and hope to have it up and running very soon.

Sorry for the inconvenience,
Mark

Your Feedback - Finding Ideas and Resources

2008-02-24T18:59:00.001Z

I'm keen to find out what you think about the organisation of the ideas and resources on Teaching Ideas. I've been spending lots of time over the past year shuffling things around on the contents pages within each subject area. Some of the pages have been split (to save you having to scroll down enormous pages), and lots of subheadings have been added to split the resources up into smaller sections. Has this been useful?

I would be really interested in hearing your thoughts about finding material on Teaching Ideas. Can you get to the sections you want quickly and easily? Does it take you a while to find your way around? Do you have an idea for making things clearer?

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments area, or email me at mark@teachingideas.co.uk. Thanks!

Teachers TV Staffroom Monologues Competition

2008-02-21T18:47:00.001Z

Calling all budding scriptwriters who work in education!

Following the success of Staffroom Monologues 2007, Teachers TV are delighted to announce a national competition in association with the National Union of Teachers to find the best screenwriters of the staffroom.

School staff who are budding screenwriters or simply have an interesting story to tell can win the chance of having their script performed by a well known actor for a special Teachers TV series, Staffroom Monologues. As part of their prize, five winning writers will be invited to see their monologue being filmed or recorded for broadcast by Teachers TV later in the year. The deadline for entries is midnight on 25 March 2008.

This years Writer Judge will be Ashley Pharoah the British television writer, co-creator of the successful drama series Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes..

I think this competition is a great way for people who work at the coal-face of education to tell the rest of us about it and I'm really looking forward to seeing what people come up with. I remember my own school days very clearly, a time of argument and wonder, friendship and plotting, tears and laughter. All life was there, a writer's dream. And then you got to go home on a bus. Happy scribbling!"

To enter, budding script writers that work in education (paid or voluntary) are asked to submit a single character fictional monologue of between 800 and 1,000 words by 25 March 2008 on any aspect of school life from the perspective of someone who works in a school. For help and inspiration and to enter please visit www.teachers.tv/monologues

List of Teaching Ideas

2008-02-18T08:38:00.001Z

Luke Watkinson (from www.teachinglinks.co.uk) has set up a very useful list of teaching ideas which can be used across the curriculum. You can view these at:

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg3mtjfp_12fq9wkn&pli=1

If anyone is able to add any new ideas to the list, contact Luke (view the document for his contact details) and he'll give you permission to edit the list.

teachr.co.uk

2008-02-11T18:10:00.001Z

I've just set up a new site at www.teachr.co.uk.

It's intended to be a single place which gives you easy access to:
* the latest teaching news (from the BBC / Guardian / Primary Teacher UK),
* lots of useful teaching links,
* the latest posts in education forums,
* a search engine which finds ideas and resources on a selection of high quality education resource sites.

I would really like to hear what people think of it. Is it useful to you? Can you think of other useful sections / links to add?
Thanks,
Mark

Teaching Ideas Update - 31st December 2007

2007-12-31T11:51:00.001Z

Here's a copy of my recent update message for those who don't subscribe the mailing list:

Hi,

It's holiday time for me here in the UK, so I've been able to add a lot of new material to Teaching Ideas, and make a few other changes...

New Ideas and Resources - Take a look at the new content, including Jailbreak (a super cross-curricular Maths and ICT activity), Adjective Alphabet (a simple way of collecting adjectives for your written work), and lots of new printables in the Maths and Classroom Management sections. Look at the New Ideas page to see what's been added recently. Don't forget the new photos on the Display Photos site, or the new messages in the Teaching Forum too. Thank you to the contributors.

Organisation - Teaching Ideas continues to grow quickly, so I've been tidying things up a little lately. The contents pages have been re-organised, and some things have been moved to a new location. I hope that this makes things easier to find, but I realise that there are some areas that could still do with a spring clean!

Quick Contributions - As I'm a full-time teacher, it's difficult to add new ideas and contributions as quickly as I would like to be able to. However, at the bottom of each of the contents pages, there is now a new 'Submit an Idea' form. This allows you to add one of your own fantastic lesson ideas, which will appear on the same page once it is moderated (normally within 24 hours). Any ideas submitted using these forms may be added to their own dedicated page on the site at a later date, so please leave your name so that I can credit your contribution, if you would like me to).

Of course, you can still contribute ideas and resources using the Share Your Ideas form, or by email.

Happy Birthday! - I started Teaching Ideas in 1998 while I was at university training to be a teacher. So, 2008 is the tenth birthday of the site. It's hard to believe that it's been going for 10 years. The site has grown enormously because of the numerous contributions from kind teachers all around the world, so THANK YOU to everyone who has taken the time to share their ideas, support the site, or send feedback since then. I'm incredibly proud of what Teaching Ideas has achieved, and I hope to continue working on it for another ten years at least!

Happy New Year, and Best Wishes for 2008.

Mark Warner

Secondary Resources

2007-11-11T13:53:00.001Z

A couple of new resources have been recently added to the site, which are for use by pupils aged 11 and over. I would be interested in people's feedback about having this material on the site. Teaching Ideas was originally called 'Teaching Ideas for Primary Teachers', but over the years, it's become known as simply 'Teaching Ideas'.

I'm more than happy to keep adding secondary content... it makes the site useful for even more teachers, and it also gives primary teachers more resources for their more able pupils. I'm a primary teacher, so I need other secondary teachers to contribute their material in order to further develop this aspect of the site though!What do you think? Let me know in the comments...

Thank You!

2007-11-05T18:42:00.000Z

I've just added a new feature to the Teaching Forum, which allows users to thank each other. There are now lots of people posting messages and offering their help and advice. If someone helps you with something, you can thank them by pressing the 'Thank This User' button, and the forum will keep a record of how many times each person has been thanked. This will then be displayed proudly next to their username!

So if someone helps you with something, why not thank them?

Top Rated Ideas

2007-10-24T11:10:00.000+01:00

I've just created a new page on the site which lists the Top Rated Ideas. It shows you the ten pages which have the highest ratings across the entire Teaching Ideas and More Teaching Ideas sites.

You can see the Top Rated list at http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/toprated.htm

Teachers TV Great Books Survey

2007-09-24T20:58:00.000+01:00

The team at Teachers TV have asked me to let you know about their Great Book survey...

Teachers TV and the NUT are looking for people to participate in the Great Books online survey, to be made into a Teachers TV countdown series later in the term.

We’re looking to discover the top 10 Education books that have most inspired you.

Everyone connected with teaching has a favourite book in their lives. We asked hundreds of people in the educational community to name the book that has most inspired them in their careers. The initial list of 40 books below is the result. Now it’s your turn. We want to know what books have had the biggest impact on you. Then we’ll be making a programme announcing the Top Ten – and you could be in it!

Teachers, students, educationalists – in fact, anyone interested in education – are invited to vote for the book which has most inspired them personally about teaching and learning.

We’re starting off with a list of 40 influential books suggested by Dr Dennis Hayes of Canterbury Christ Church University: from Plato’s Republic to Sue Palmer’s Toxic Childhood; from Rousseau’s Emile to John Holt’s How Children Fai; and takes in along the way books by writers as diverse as George Eliot, Paulo Freire, John Dewey, Margaret Donaldson, Matthew Arnold and Sue Cowley. If your top choice is not on the list you can even add it yourself.

The survey opens on the 17th September and closes on the 26th October.

We welcome all comments on what makes your choice the greatest book and will feature the best responses in the programmes.

You can vote online at www.teachers.tv/greatbooks

Back to school...

2007-09-08T17:13:00.000+01:00

Hi all,
I started back at school this week, so the updates to Teaching Ideas will slow down a little until the next holiday period!

It's been really nice to come home after a busy day at work, and find that people have been using the comments system so much. Over 50 new reviews have been posted for the ideas this week, with over 500 ratings too!

This new 'Rate and Review' feature really allows users of the site to give useful feedback and suggestions for particular ideas. It also makes things much more meaningful for me, as people often post that they have used particular activities that day / week. Whilst I know that the site gets lots of visitors, I still sometimes forget that people do take away the ideas and resources and use them in their own classrooms!

It's really exciting to hear how the ideas are being successfully used by teachers all around the world. Thanks to everyone who has rated and reviewed so far. I'm hoping to add new features linked to this system... but I really ought to get on with my own planning first! :-)

Rate and Review

2007-08-28T14:24:00.000+01:00

Over the past few weeks, I've spent a considerable amount of time adding a commenting feature to different sections of the site. It worked well, but it took a very long time to add the facility manually to every page.

However, last night I found a new system which is much better. It allows you to rate each idea, and give your own review as well. It's much quicker to load, and it shows comments in the main window... which means no more pop-ups!

It's only taken me about three hours to add it to the entire site today, so you can now rate and review across every section of Teaching Ideas and More Teaching Ideas. I've transferred the previous sets of comments to the new system, and people are using it already to give some really constructive feedback. Thanks!

New Theme on Teaching Forum

2007-08-21T08:22:00.001+01:00

I've spent some time updating the theme on the Teaching Forum today. The new theme has greater security features, and it also works better for those using Safari as their web browser. I hope that you like it!

I've also expanded the comment system to the History, Geography, DT and Assemblies areas of the site. My final aim is to extend this to the rest of the site, but I'm back to school in a few weeks, so I might not be able to complete this task for a while yet.

Comments about comments...

2007-08-10T08:52:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a week since I started the comment system, so I thought I'd give some of my own comments about it.

My intention was (and still is) to make the site more interactive, with constructive feedback from users about the ideas, with the ideas. However, over the past week, I've had comments such as "you stink", postings of four-letter words, and messages which have obviously been typed by someone who was just bashing random letters out on the keyboard!

On top of that, I had nearly 100 spam links posted on the Display Photos comment system earlier in the week. I also got back from a very enjoyable wedding celebration last night to find someone had registered and posted some unsuitable words and links in the Teaching Forum! It seems that some people simply have nothing better to do!

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has posted genuine comments on the site, and in the forum. Your thoughtful words are much appreciated. I'm going to keep the comments running for a while yet, and see how things go.

Teaching Ideas Update - 7th August 2007

2007-08-07T13:38:00.000+01:00

Here's a copy of my latest 'Teaching Ideas Update' message for those who don't subscribe to the Mailing List...

The last few weeks have seen a number of changes and updates to Teaching Ideas:

Teaching Ideas News - I have moved the news / blog pages to a new system, and they are now more integrated into the main site. I've also been much better at posting messages on it! Visit www.teachingideas.co.uk/news to see the latest posts.

New Tabs - I've been working behind the scenes over the past few months creating some new tabs for Teaching Ideas and More Teaching Ideas. They're now online, and make it easier to move around the sites. The tabs are bigger than the previous ones, they're easier to read, and I think they look much better! The new tab system has also been added to Display Photos and the new Teaching Forum.

Teaching Forum - Teaching Ideas had a forum many years ago. However, it was removed at one point (although I can't remember why!). So, I've set up a new forum for visitors to the site... it's a place to share ideas, help each other and have a good chat! Lots of people have registered already and some interesting conversations have been started. So join in with the discussions!

New Contributions - Of course, I have added a large number of new ideas and resources since my last email. These have included lots of Display Photos, some educational videos which teach spelling concepts, a number of PE games, and much much more! Thank you to these people who have sent in contributions. Visit the Share Your Ideas page to send some of your own.

Comments - I'm currently trialling a comment system in the Art, PE and PSHE sections of the site, which allows you to leave a comment on the ideas you see. Have you used an idea? Can you think of improvements? Leave a comment! If this idea is successful, I'll expand the system to the rest of the site.

Title Pages - The title pages of Teaching Ideas and More Teaching Ideas have also seen a number of changes. I've tried to make them much more useful, and they are automatically updated with the latest changes and contributions to the other parts of the site.

RSS Feeds - This mailing list is one of the ways that I can update you with information about the sites. I've also been implementing a number of RSS feeds. These are all free to subscribe to, and will give you updates every time that something new is added.

Teaching Ideas Latest Additions - http://feeds.feedburner.com/teachingideas
Teaching Ideas News - http://feeds.feedburner.com/teachingideasnews
Display Photos Latest Additions - http://feeds.feedburner.com/displayphotos
Teaching Forum - Latest Posts - http://feeds.feedburner.com/teachingforum

If you're new to RSS, visit my Teacher's Guide, or see this post in the Teaching Forum.

That's it for now! Best wishes,

Mark Warner

Teaching Ideas for Primary Teachers
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk

New Look and New Features...

2007-08-02T18:56:00.000+01:00

Hi again,

I've completed another update to the sites today. Teaching Ideas, More Teaching Ideas and Display Photos all have a new look, which I'm really pleased with. There are new sets of tabs at the top of the sites, which are a lot clearer and much bigger than the previous set.

I've also made considerable changes to the front pages of Teaching Ideas and More Teaching Ideas. These now have links to the latest additions, the latest Teaching Ideas news and other new features. These are automatically updated, so a quick way of finding the most up to date information is to visit the front pages of the site!

Another new addition is the Teaching Forum. Teaching Ideas used to have a forum, many moons ago, but it is no longer available. The new forum is part of the 'More Teaching Ideas' site, but you can also visit it directly by going to www.teachingforum.co.uk. It's a place to share ideas, ask for help and just have a good chat!

Today's update has been in the planning stages for many months now, so it's nice that it's finally online. Let me know what you think of it... feedback is always appreciated!

Comments...

2007-08-02T09:41:00.000+01:00

In the past, I have received a number of requests to add a commenting facility to the ideas and resources on Teaching Ideas. I've often wondered how to go about adding this, and today I've worked it out!

I've set up a trial in the Art section to see how this works. If it is successful, I'll extend it to the other areas of the site. Basically, it allows you to read the lesson / activity ideas in the Art area, and add a comment on them. If you've tried the idea yourself, or if you can think of a way of extending it, you can now post a message to tell others your thoughts.

A few points to remember:

This only works on the 'ideas'... it's not possible to add a comment facility for each of the downloadable files unfortunately.
Comments appear in a pop-up window, so you might need to disable any pop-up blockers you have installed.
All comments are moderated, so they may not appear online immediately.

I hope that this facility is useful.

I've been Simpsonized!

2007-08-01T14:09:00.000+01:00

Hi again!

Over the past week or so, I've been spending a lot of time working on Teaching Ideas, More Teaching Ideas, Display Photos, and another site (to be announced soon!). This has mainly involved adding new contributions, but also updating how things look... which is something I'm never satisfied with!

In between doing this, I've also been playing with the Simpsonize Me website. You simply upload a photo of yourself, and the site makes a Simpsons character based on your photo. This is my one... I'm really pleased with it, and I'm definitely going to use it to brighten up some of my interactive whiteboard slides at school.

This kind of thing would also be good to use on the Simpson's Target Cards, produced by Andrew Ross over at Primary Teacher UK. The children could have their teacher, as a Simpsons character, on their target!

Video Files...

2007-07-30T18:51:00.001+01:00

Teaching Ideas is full of useful Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF worksheets, SMART Notebook slides and other types of file. Up until now, there haven't been many videos. However, Richard Jenking and his drama group have been busy making some really useful video files. They're all designed to review children's understanding of different Literacy concepts, and he's allowed me to post them on Teaching Ideas. Here's an example.

These videos are all hosted by Youtube, which has a lot of fantastic videos for teachers to use in the classroom. However, there is also a lot of inappropriate material on there, so it's important to check the contents of any video before sharing it with your class!

Teachertube is a similar site, but it only hosts educational videos. I've used it a number of times to post some of the stop-motion animations and short movies which have been produced by my class (search for videos by user 'thedowns' if you're interested!).

I'm really impressed with how other teachers are using this type of media within their teaching. What do you think? Have you used Youtube / Teachertube in your classroom? Why... or why not?

Welcome!

2007-07-29T18:09:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

This is the new home for the Teaching Ideas News pages. The previous system used a third party company to host the pages. They provided a fantastic service, but I've moved to this new system so that this area is now completely integrated with the main site.

If you use RSS and you'd like to keep up to date with the latest Teaching Ideas News, please subscribe using this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/teachingideasnews

Thanks!

Mark