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https://learning.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/resources/what-would-life-be-like-without-electricity/

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This video will help your students explore electricity and make creative links between science, history, literacy and design.

It's one of 7 questions to explore before you leave primary school, a series of short films designed to provide inspiration for cross-curricular learning. Find out more below.

With electricity playing such an important role in our everyday lives, it's easy to take it for granted. But have you ever stopped to wonder what your life would be like if you had no access to electricity?

Filmed at Wonderlab: The Equinor Gallery at the Science Museum, London.

7 questions to explore before you leave primary school

This project-a collaboration between the Science Museum, TES and the Arts Council-is designed to provide inspiration for cross-curricular learning and offer greater access to STEM for all types of learners. We see that wonder and imagination are the foundation of both arts and sciences, and these videos invite young people to help answer big questions about the world using their curiosity, creative thinking and problem-solving skills through STEM, arts and humanities subjects.

Watch the other videos in the series

2: What does sound look like?
3: Do you see what I see?
4: What's in the clouds?
5: Where does the sun go at night?
6: Where can you find patterns?
7: Can you lift something heavier than yourself?

Each question, which can be used either as part of a lesson or as the start of a full topic of work, can be approached from a multitude of angles, opening up opportunities for learning across science, history, art and design and beyond.
See all seven films on our YouTube channel

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What would life be like without electricity? - 7 questions: film 1 - Learning

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This video will help your students explore electricity and make creative links between science, history, literacy and design. It's one of 7 questions to explore before you leave primary school , a series of short films designed to provide inspiration for cross-curricular learning. Find out more below.

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Why is There a Leap Year? | Worksheet | Education.com

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Every four years something funny happens with our calendars -- we add a day! Why do we do this? Discover the science behind leap year and find out what our planet's rotation has to do with it. Why does the earth spin? How is a rainbow formed?

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Time

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Hugh Evans: What does it mean to be a citizen of the world?

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Hugh Evans started a movement that mobilizes "global citizens," people who self-identify first and foremost not as members of a state, nation or tribe but as members of the human race. In this uplifting and personal talk, learn more about how this new understanding of our place in the world is galvanizing people to take action in the fights against extreme poverty, climate change, gender inequality and more.

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https://nzmaths.co.nz/problem-solving

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Advisory Service Professional Learning STEM Engagement Technicians Resources STEM Bulletin Early Years & Primary Bulletin STEM Technician Latest See All News Twitter

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Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

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y3 internet research and communication primary resources

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Y3 Internet Research and Communication Primary

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Y3 Internet Research and Communication Primary Resources, Computing, Year 3, PlanIt, Lesson Plans, Units, Internet, Y3, KS2 Primary Teaching Resources

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Great explanation of the concepts behind the processes!

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Tips and practical info and discussion

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E-safety

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The National Crime Agency's CEOP Education team aim to help protect children and young people from online child sexual abuse.

We do this through our education programme, providing training, resources and information to professionals working with children, young people and their families.

I am:

Respecting me, you, us: building healthy relationships and creating positive cultures is a CEOP Education resource for 12 -14 year olds developed in association with clinical psychologist, Dr. Elly Hanson.

Under 18 and worried about online sexual abuse?
To report, click to visit the CEOP Safety Centre.

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The CEOP Education programme from the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Education Team aims to protect children and young people aged 4-18 from online child sexual abuse.

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Introduction

Today's youth are often called 'digital natives' by adults because of the seemingly effortless way they engage with all things digital. It's easy to see why: Canadian youth live in an interactive, "on demand" digital culture where they are used to accessing media whenever and wherever they want. Instant-messaging, photo sharing, texting, social networking, video-streaming, and mobile Internet use are all examples where youth have led the charge in new ways of engaging online.

But this enthusiasm masks a potential problem: although young people don't need coaxing to take up Internet technologies and their skills quickly improve relative to their elders, without guidance they remain amateur users of information and communications technology (ICT), which raises concerns about a generation of youth who are not fully digitally literate, yet are deeply immersed in cyberspace.

In order to be literate in today's media-rich environments, young people need to develop knowledge, values and a whole range of critical thinking, communication and information management skills for the digital age. As increasing numbers of businesses, services and even democratic processes migrate online, citizens who lack digital literacy skills risk being disadvantaged when it comes to accessing healthcare and government services and opportunities for employment, education and civic participation.[1]

A basic question, then, is what exactly is digital literacy?

This section looks at the various aspects and principles relating to digital literacy and the many skills and competencies that fall under the digital literacy umbrella.

What is Digital Literacy?

Digital Literacy Model

This model[2] illustrates the many interrelated elements that fall under the digital literacy umbrella. These range from basic access, awareness and training to inform citizens and build consumer and user confidence to highly sophisticated, and more complex creative and critical literacies and outcomes.[3] There is a logical progression from the more fundamental skills towards the higher, more transformative levels, but doing so is not necessarily a sequential process: much depends on the needs of individual users.

Use, Understand, Create

Traditional definitions of literacy have focused on skills relating to numeracy, listening, speaking, reading, writing and critical thinking, with the end goal being developing active thinkers and learners who are able to engage in society in effective and meaningful ways.[4] These skills are needed for full participation in digital society as well, but they are only part of a larger set of skills and competencies that are required.

Competencies for digital literacy can be classified according to three main principles: Use, Understand and Create.

Use represents the technical fluency that's needed to engage with computers and the Internet. Skills and competencies that fall under "use" range from basic technical know-how - using computer programs such as word processors, web browsers, email, and other communication tools - to the more sophisticated abilities for accessing and using knowledge resources, such as search engines and online databases, and emerging technologies such as cloud computing.

Understand is that critical piece - it's the set of skills that help us comprehend, contextualize, and critically evaluate digital media, so that we can make informed decisions about what we do and encounter online. These are the essential skills that we need to start teaching our kids as soon as they go online.

Understand includes recognizing how networked technology affects our behaviour and our perceptions, beliefs and feelings about the world around us.

Understand also prepares us for a knowledge economy as we develop - individually and collectively - information management skills for finding, evaluating and effectively using information to communicate, collaborate and solve problems.

Create is the ability to produce content and effectively communicate through a variety of digital media tools. Creation with digital media is more than knowing how to use a word processor or write an email: it includes being able to adapt what we produce for various contexts and audiences; to create and communicate using rich media such as images, video and sound; and to effectively and responsibly engage with Web 2.0 user-generated content such as blogs and discussion forums, video and photo sharing, social gaming and other forms of social media.

The ability to create using digital media ensures that Canadians are active contributors to digital society. Creation - whether through blogs, tweets, wikis or any of the hundreds of avenues for expression and sharing online - is at the heart of citizenship and innovation.

Given how quickly and frequently our media world is evolving, developing and maintaining one's digital literacy is a lifelong process. The specific skills that are needed will vary from person to person depending on their needs and circumstances - which can range from basic awareness and training to more sophisticated and complex applications.

The Multi-Literacies of the Digital Age

Digital literacy is more than technological know-how: it includes a wide variety of ethical, social, and reflective practices that are embedded in work, learning, leisure, and daily life.

The term "multi-literacies" is often used to describe the various aptitudes and abilities that are needed for us to use, understand and create digital media. Given this, it's helpful to think of "digital literacy" not as a concrete set of skills, but as a framework that draws from and expands on numerous literacies and competencies.

Under the "digital literacy umbrella" are a wide range of interrelated skills that traditionally fall under media literacy, technology literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, communication literacy and social literacies.[5]

Media literacy:

With its expanded notion of 'text' that includes images, audio and digital media, media literacy is closely associated with digital literacy. Media literacy reflects our ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce media through understanding and appreciation of:

the art, meaning and messaging of various forms of media texts

the impact and influence of mass media and popular culture

how media texts are constructed and why they are produced

how media can be used to communicate our own ideas effectively

Critical thinking is central to both digital and media literacy. Learn more about media literacy in the Media Literacy Fundamentals section.

Technology literacy:

Proficiency with technology is most often associated with digital literacy. This ranges from basic computer skills to more complex tasks like editing a digital film or writing computer code.

We have to be careful, though, not to confuse proficiency with knowledge and understanding: a teched-up teen with superb technology skills may still trust much of the information he/she finds online, copy straight off the Web for school projects, and not give a thought to the privacy implications of his/her online activities. Digital literacy involves both skills and a set of good online habits that include reflection, critical awareness and responsibility.

Information literacy:

This is another important aspect of being digitally literate that includes the ability to assess what information is needed, to know how to find it online and how to critically evaluate and apply it. Originally developed for library use, this literacy translates well into the digital domain where, in a sea of unfiltered online information, knowing how to think critically about sources and content is essential.

Visual literacy:

At its most basic, visual literacy reflects ourability to understand and produce visual messages, whether through objects, actions or symbols. Visual literacy is essential to both learning and communication in modern society.

Communication literacy:

These competencies form the foundation for thinking, organizing and connecting with others in a networked society. In particular, today's youth need not only to understand how to integrate knowledge from multiple sources such as music, video, online databases, and other media[6]; they also need to know how to use multiple sources to disseminate and share knowledge.

Social literacy:

Social competencies are also needed for full participation in digital society, which media scholar Henry Jenkins describes as a "participatory culture" that is developed through collaboration and networking.
In such a world, youth need skills for working within social networks, for pooling knowledge within a collective intelligence, for negotiating across cultural differences that shape the governing assumptions in different communities and for reconciling conflicting bits of data to form a coherent picture of the world around them.[7]
Jenkins identifies a series of "new literacies" that are built upon and reinforce these social skills. These include:

Play - the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking - the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details

Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple platforms (understanding a storyline that's told both on a TV show and a website, for instance, or following a news story through various different outlets)

Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.[8]

Globally, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) frames its benchmarks for digital literacy around six standards: creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information fluency; critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts.[9]

Where Does "Digital Citizenship" Fit In?
One of the big mission statements and themes of our school is building character today for communities of tomorrow, so we are always tying things back into good character and how we want to be perceived by others; how we want to treat others; and how we want others to treat us ... technology provides one more way to teach it, one more way to make it relevant to students. [10]
Digital Citizenship is "character education" in a networked world. As one teacher puts it:

Being a critically engaged user and consumer of media is an essential part of active citizenship in the 21 st century: we use media to inform ourselves, to help shape our opinions, to interact with our communities and to make our voices heard.

Models for digital citizenship are generally framed around elements such as rights and responsibilities, participation or civic engagement, norms of behaviour or etiquette and a sense of belonging and membership.[11][12]

Digital citizenship is closely aligned to civics in a traditional sense, where understanding digital media and being able to use it is becoming a vital part of active citizenship. As media messages dominate our political debates and tools such as Facebook and Twitter are used for activism and organizing political movements around the world, it's increasingly important for young people to be able to view media critically and be prepared to be engaged digital citizens who contribute to their communities in a positive way. To do so, they need the full range of skills we associate with media and digital literacy to be able to know and exercise the rights they hold as consumers, as members of online communities, as citizens of a state and as human beings.

Fostering Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Many teachers are using technology in their classrooms to support different learning styles and to engage students: what's missing are guidelines to help them do this in ways that promote innovative thinking and collaborative work, promote ethical practices and strengthen their own professional development.

Teachers, interviewed by MediaSmarts, identified several key factors that limit the ability of educators to help students build digital literacy skills. They also offered some solutions to these problems, including the need to:

provide students with authentic learning opportunities that are enhanced through technological tools;

position teachers as facilitators and co-learners, instead of "drill and kill" experts;

focus teacher training on how to use technology to enhance learning and meet curricular outcomes; and

create reasonable policies and less restrictive filters in schools so that teachers can better help students develop and exercise good judgement.[13]

Technology has shifted the traditional classroom paradigm that positions the teacher as the expert. This can be hard for many educators to accept, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. In our quickly evolving technological world, we are all learners, and teachers who are willing to share responsibility with students are more likely to be comfortable - and effective - in a networked classroom.

This is where our education system can benefit from models in the youth engagement sector, where young people are acknowledged as decision-makers, partners and agents of social change, and adults assume the role of trusted guides and lifelong learners alongside youth.[14]

One of the supporting principles of Manitoba's Continuum Model for Literacy with ICT is the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student.[15] According to this principle, teachers act as facilitators and guides who provide scaffolding to help students develop higher-level critical and creative thinking and deeper understanding relating to ICT as they gradually become more autonomous users of networked technology.[16]

This principle fits well into effective programs for digital literacy and digital citizenship that:

Are holistic, building links between school, home and the community and taking into account both online and offline opportunities for engagement and empowerment

Are evidence-based

Are proactive, as opposed to reactive

Position digital technology as a right and a responsibility

Reinforce positive and pro-social uses of technology

Provide a wide range of tools and resources

Focus not just on safety, but the whole range of digital literacy skills and competencies

Are built upon traditional aspects of character and moral education as well as a broader interpretation of civics education

Are child-centred and youth-led - building on the reality of young people's lives and providing real and authentic experiences

Foster a gradual release of responsibility towards independent practice by youth - working with youth in building resilience, finding solutions and promoting positive engagement with technology

Position adults as supportive mentors and facilitators

MediaSmarts is working with academics and educators across the country to identify where digital literacy skills are situated in provincial and territorial frameworks and curricula - and to highlight the innovative ways that teachers are helping their students develop the critical thinking skills that are central to lifelong learning and citizenship in the digital age. With your input, this section will continue to grow and evolve.

[1] Hobbs, Renee (2012). "Hobbs: Info literacy must be a community education movement" http://www.knightcomm.org/hobbs-info-literacy-must-be-a-community-education-movement/
[2] This figure is based on models from the Report of the Digital Britain Media Literacy Working Group. (March 2009), DigEuLit - a European Framework for Digital Literacy (2005), and Jenkins et al., (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf
[3] Jenkins, H. et. al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century. MacArthur; Chicago Ill. p 4.
[4] Combes, B. (2010). How much do traditional literacy skills count? Literacy in the 21st century & reading from the screen. http://www.slideshare.net/IASLonline/literacy-skills-challenged
[5] Martin, A. (2008). "Digital Literacy and the "Digital Society" in Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices: Lankshear C., Knobel, M. (Eds.) New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
[6] Bertram C. Bruce (2002) in Jenkins, H. et. al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century. MacArthur; Chicago Ill. p. 19.
[7] Jenkins, H. et. al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century. MacArthur; Chicago Ill. p 20.
[8] Jenkins, H. et. al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century. MacArthur; Chicago Ill. p 4.
[9] International Society for Technology in Education (2007) iste.nets.s: Advancing Digital Age Learning. Iste.org/nets.
[10] Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III - Teachers' Perspectives at /english/corporate/media_kit/upload/YCWW-III-Teachers-Perspectives_EN.pdf
[11] Collier, A. (2011). "Making the Case for Digital Citizenship." Slideshare presentation. http://www.slideshare.net/annecollier/making-the-case-for-digital-citizenship-111104
[12] The Ministry of Education in New Zealand includes these elements for digital citizenship in its curriculum. http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/Professional-development/Digital-citizenship-modules/Digital-citizenship-and-cybersafety/What-is-digital-citizenship.
[13] Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III - Teachers' Perspectives at /english/corporate/media_kit/upload/YCWW-III-Teachers-Perspectives_EN.pdf
[14] Youth Infusion. "Continuum of Change". http://www.youthinfusion.com/
[15] Government of Manitoba, Ministry of Education, Citizenship and Youth (2006). A Continuum Model for Literacy with ICT Across the Curriculum. www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/lict/index.html
[16] Ibid.

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This section looks at the various aspects and principles relating to digital literacy and the many skills and competencies that fall under the digital literacy umbrella. The relationship between digital literacy and digital citizenship is also explored and tips are provided for teaching these skills in the classroom.

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Practice that supports problem solving in children

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Children use problem-solving skills on a constant basis - when they experiment and investigate, when they select materials, and when they try to work together: "How far will that water squirt?" "Where is that sound coming from?" "What do you think will happen if we add one more block?" We often divide children's learning into emotional, social, creative, cognitive, and physical. But watching children as they go about their day reveals that problem solving encompasses all of these areas of development.
TOTAL THINKING
Creative-thinking and critical-thinking skills are essential components of problem solving.

Creative thinking is the ability to look at a problem in many different ways. This might involve seeing a different way to do something, generating new ideas, or using materials in unique ways. Basic to being a creative thinker is a willingness to take risks, to experiment, and even to make mistakes.

What you can do: Part of encouraging creative thinking is helping children become both fluent and flexible thinkers. Fluent thinkers have the ability to come up with ideas; flexible thinkers are able to see many possibilities or view objects or situations in new ways. Just as problem solving takes place all day long, so can the activities you do to encourage children to be creative thinkers. Here are a few suggestions:

Brainstorm. Invite children to be fluent thinkers by asking them to respond to questions that have many right answers. Incorporate these questions into the interests children are involved with and the situations they are in. For instance, if children are having a discussion about nighttime, you might ask them to think of everything that lights up in the night, all the people who work at night, all the things they'd like to do if they stayed up all night.

Reflect. Help children to be flexible thinkers by asking them to comment on specific objects or situations in your room. (Remember, this activity, too, works best in the context of what is going on.) For instance, Carla needs a hat in the dramatic-play corner and can't find one. What are some other things she could use as a hat? Are there any ways to make a hat? Or, during group time, you're reading a book and the boy on the cover looks sad. What are some reasons he might look this way?

Critical Thinking is the ability to mentally break down a problem or an idea into parts and analyze them. Sorting, classifying, and comparing similarities and differences are all a part of this important skill. Critical thinking can also be called logical thinking.

What you can do: When you break larger problems into smaller parts, they become easier to understand and to solve.

Challenge. Encourage children to practice critical and logical thinking by asking them open-ended questions, such as "How many ways can you sort these blocks?" "How many different ways can you make a building using these blocks?" "How would the building be different if you used blocks that were all the same size?"

Listen. Asking questions about things that don't make sense is another way children express critical thinking. When a child wonders, "Why do I have a shadow on the playground but not inside?" or "Why can't I see the wind?" you don't need to respond with one right answer. Instead, encourage children to express their ideas.

YOUR ROLE
You help foster problem solving not so much by providing special materials or specific activities but by having a responsive, accepting attitude. Here are other key ways to facilitate children's growth:

Provide plenty of time every day for children to choose activities based on their interests and developmental levels. Free-play situations create endless opportunities for children to identify and solve problems.

Follow children's leads. By observing children's interactions and dilemmas, you can support their problem-solving efforts and help them accomplish their goals.

Reinforce children's solutions. Let children know that their ideas and efforts are valued.

Extend creative thinking and problem solving. Ask open-ended questions about activities to help children see the problem they are trying to solve in new and different ways.
NURTURING PROBLEM SOLVERS
Think of yourself as having four roles observer, supporter, facilitator, and model watching, encouraging, interacting as a questioning partner, and sharing with children how you solve problems.
As an observer:
Step back and watch children's independent problem solving. Sometimes it may seem easier and faster to jump in and solve a problem for children or to show them the "right" way But stepping in too early can stifle their thinking or send a subtle message that you're not confident they can think problems through by themselves. Instead of intervening right away, step back and watch children's problem-solving skills unfold. Keep in mind that children's problem solving doesn't always look like a thinking activity. In fact, it can look like an argument, an experiment, or an unusual and messy way to use materials.

Focus on the process children are engaged in. Try to be patient while you encourage children to try new ways and look at problems from new perspectives.
As a supporter:
Acknowledge children's efforts, letting them know that what they are doing is important. Offer verbal support: "Look at all the different ways you're trying to make that piece fit in your puzzle. You're working hard to figure it out, aren't you?" At times, nonverbal support may be all that's needed - a smile, an understanding nod, or a thumbsup can show support and encourage children to continue in their thinking process. Remember too, that just by sitting quietly next to a child, you can communicate: "I understand what you're doing, and I know it's important."

Create accepting environments where children feel free to express their ideas without fear of being wrong or of not being taken seriously. Make sure your setting is a protective "laboratory" where children know they can experiment and practice problem-solving skills throughout each day.

Give children opportunities for open ended play activities in long periods of time. Create opportunities for children to initiate and solve their own problems and plenty of time to test out possible ideas and solutions.
As a facilitator:
Watch for times when children are engaged in problem solving and interject provocative questions to propel them into new ways of thinking. Remember open-ended, divergent questions have many possible answers and, so, invite children to think and problemsolve. Closed-ended, convergent questions have right and wrong answers and can actually block children's thinking processes. (See "What Makes a Good Question?" below).

Encourage children to express themselves. Rather than telling children about what they can make at the art table today, try showing them the materials and inviting them to brainstorm ideas. You might say, "I need your help. I brought in this bag full of art materials. What do you think we can make?" Then let children act on their ideas and make whatever they choose, offering your suggestions too. This approach is a very successful way to help children feel comfortable solving problems. When they see that you don't have one "right" answer or method in mind, they can move past fears of being "wrong" and draw on their wonderful creative thinking.

Provide a variety of problem-solving experiences. Offer games, puzzles, discussions, literature, and projects that children design - a wide range of activities that inspire creative and critical thinking and encourage children to stretch their minds.
As a model:
Think about your own approach to problem solving. Whether you're aware of it or not, children are always watching you. They observe how you deal with problems as examples of ways they might solve problems themselves. Talk about problem solving. When problems arise in the room, discuss your thought processes as you work through the problem. For example, you might say, "I have a problem. I planned to put out finger-painting materials today, but we've run out of finger-painting paper. What do you think we should do? Should we use different paper? I wonder how that would work? Should we wait until tomorrow because I can buy some tonight? Or maybe I could ask the teacher next door if she has some we could borrow " In other words, model fluid thinking and a positive attitude as well as a process for solving the small problems of everyday life. And involve children further by asking them to suggest their own solutions.

Emphasize the vocabulary of problem solving. As you speak with children, use the words problem, think, ideas, and solve. Children will begin to use them to define and describe their own thinking.

Be willing to make mistakes. It is reassuring to children to discover that adults make mistakes too. So let children see some of the mistakes you make, then ask them to help you solve the resulting problems. They feel important and, at the same time, learn that making mistakes isn't really such a bad thing after all. Instead, it's an opportunity for learning.

Problem solving is not about memorizing facts like the names of colors or shapes or the letters of the alphabet. Instead, it is about using two very important skills - the ability to think logically and the ability to think creatively when using and applying facts to solve problems. Child-centered, child-- initiated problem-solving activities play a vital role in developing children's ability to learn, think, feel confident, and be competent at understanding their world. What could be more important!
Great Books!
If the Shoe Fits by Carolyn Chapman (Skylight); Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development by Rima Shore (Family and Work Institute); Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus by Joyce Paster Foley and Michael T Bagley (Trillium Press); Think It Through: Developing Thinking Skills With Young Children by Martha Hayes and Kathy Faggella (First Teachers Press); and What Will Happen If ...? by Barbara Sprung, Merle Froschl, and Patricia Campbell (Educational Equity Concepts).

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How You Can Help Children Solve Problems | Scholastic

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Children use problem-solving skills on a constant basis - when they experiment and investigate, when they select materials, and when they try to work together: "How far will that water squirt?" "Where is that sound coming from?" "What do you think will happen if we add one more block?"

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https://iqe4efxsuu-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4-Cs-

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Many cross curricular links

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Quick Specs

The download button opens the iTunes App Store, where you may continue the download process. You must have iTunes installed with an active iTunes account in order to download and install the software. This download may not be available in some countries.

Full Specifications

Fixed orientation issue where the app occasionally appeared upside down.

Additional Requirements

Compatible with: ipad2wifi, ipad23g, ipadthirdgen, ipadthirdgen4g, ipadfourthgen, ipadfourthgen4g, ipadmini, ipadmini4g

Previous Versions

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The download button opens the iTunes App Store, where you may continue the download process. You must have iTunes installed with an active iTunes account in order to download and install the software. This download may not be available in some countries. Full Specifications Fixed orientation issue where the app occasionally appeared upside down.

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The Primary Science Teaching Trust helps improve the teaching and learning of science to children and young people in the UK.

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Internet and Web explained

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Now that the packet has arrived the web server opens it and reads your computer's request, in this case 'please send me this image'.

Images are often quite large so they need to be split up into lots of packets, often hundreds or thousands of them. All of these packets include information about how they should be put back together as well as where they are going and where they came from.

Different routes

The web server sends these packets back to your computer and once again routers and switches direct them.

The routers try to find the fastest possible route for each packet. They might take different routes and might not arrive in the same order they were sent.

Putting the packets back together

Now that all the packets have been received the information attached to them tells your computer how to put them back together and the image will display on your screen.

This whole process of sending a request and receiving the packets usually takes less than a second!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Now that the packet has arrived the web server opens it and reads your computer's request, in this case 'please send me this image'. Images are often quite large so they need to be split up into lots of packets, often hundreds or thousands of them.

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Record your sightings of snails and join a global research project.

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A survey of Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis Snails

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Opportunities to use ICT in science particularly Eco investigations

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Opportunities to use ICT in science particularly Eco investigations

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Multimodal support for learning - Data collection, graphing

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As with all good scientific investigations, eco-monitoring projects need to start with a question. This can come by asking children to look around their classroom, school and local community for environmental problems. Perhaps it gets too hot (or too cold) in the classroom at different times of the year. Maybe the teacher always puts the lights on or the data projector seems to be producing a lot of heat. Perhaps there isn't much protection from the sun in the playground, or it's near a busy road which produces noise and fumes. Is there a problem when parents drop children by car in the mornings or pick them up after school. All of these issues can be turned into questions which involve measuring something using a datalogger.

On the right is a list of questions investigated by children in the Bath and Hillingdon Eco-monitoring projects, with links to what they found out.

Is there too much carbon dioxide in our classroom?

Video of the children's photo-story

Y5 pupils at Bathwick St Mary Primary School in Bath decided to monitor carbon dioxide levels in their classroom at different times of day. They found that levels in the late morning rose to around 1600 ppm, well above the recommended level of 1000 ppm, which they decided was leading them to feel sleepy and lose concentration! Next, their eco-governor came to help them investigate possible changes they could make to reduce the build-up of CO2 levels. These included leaving doors and windows open, installing sucking and blowing fans, and thinking about portable air conditioning. At the presentation day, pupil questions raised the issue that, whilst effective, some of these solutions actually risked causing heat pollution in the outside atmosphere.

The children presented their findings as a photo-story (see right).
The teacher's project plan
How can we make our classroom cooler?

Many classrooms overheat in the summer. At St Anne's Primary School near Bristol, children wondered whether it made a difference to leave the door open (see graph on right):

'Our results show that in class 1/2J the temperature changed most so they must be the warmest classroom, because the heat from the classes beside it travels through the walls and warms up the class. 5/6SB was the coldest classroom because she didn't have the blinds open and the lights were turned off. The best class to be in in the summer is 5/6L because it was the coldest with the door open.'

At Hayes Park Primary School in Hillingdon children wondered whether the classrooms with air conditioning units would be cooler than those with fans. They measured the temperature at different points in each room. They found that there was a small temperature difference, but wondered whether it was sufficient to justify the extra cost and environmental impact of the air-con.

Do we really need the lights on?

Data from the light experiment

At St Bernadette's Primary School, Hillingdon, children discussed how they could use dataloggers to answer this question. They decided that the most important data would be the difference between the light levels with the lights on and off. If there was a great difference, perhaps the lights were needed. They found that some locations around the school needed artificial light for safety or to enable children to see their work clearly, but that others didn't.

In Hayes Park Primary, some rooms have sensors that automatically switch lights off when there is no movement in the classroom. Children wondered whether these really helped to save light. So they used dataloggers to measure light levels in classrooms with the different types of lights for thee days. They predicted that the light-sensor classrooms would have lower overall light levels than those with switches. Their findings were surprising:

'In the year 1 classes the light levels for the switch lights are lower than the sensor lights but in the year 6 classes it is the opposite. We think that the reasons why the year 6 classes are the opposite to year 1 classes results because in 6P (the class without sensors) it is in constant use, more than the other classes, as the majority of the house captains are in 6P. We have learnt that (though the evidence is not clear) lights that are activated through sensors don't always save energy (which is what they are designed to do).'

How polluted are the roads around our school?

At Holy Trinity Primary School in Hillingdon, children in the eco-club monitored carbon monoxide levels in the roads near the school at different times during the day.

The eco-monitoring team at Batheaston Primary School monitored temperature, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels around the City of Bath. They planned to integrate several curriculum areas waithin the project:

Science: Gases around us

ICT: Environmental monitoring

ICT: Graphical modelling

English: Persuasive writing

Maths: Data handling

Geography: Use of maps

History: Changes in our local area

Art: Representing atmosphere and weather

Music: Creating a soundscape

Citizenship: Identify and discuss items in the news

Pupils planned the route and decided which data to collect - sound, temperature, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels. Back in school, pupils researched background information on carbon monoxide and dioxide and their impacts on the environment; produced a book of photographs, data collected and interpretation; and produced posters to persuade fellow pupils and parents to reduce emissions.
Child's illustrated map of the pollution walk
How polluting are the teachers' cars?

Video of the teachers' car emissions enquiry

Children at St Bernadette's Primary School used the carbon monoxide monitor to measure the emissions coming out of teachers' cars. They predicted that:

Bigger cars would produce more carbon monoxide emissions.

Older cars would produce more carbon monoxide emissions.

They were surprised by their results. Larger engines seemed to produce more CO2 but age didn't seem to affect it.

How can we save energy in our school?

Children at Bishop Sutton Primary School near Bristol decided to mount a 'Powerdown' campaign - monitoring light and temperature levels around the school before and after a whole-school initiative to switch off unnecessary lights and electrical equipment. They produced a range of promotional posters and led an assembly to raise awareness amongst other pupils in the school. They also monitored the school's electricity usage and calculated the savings made. They shared their findings online at www.participateschools.co.uk by producing electronic posters.
View the electricity usage chart View the electronic posters
Children at Fromebank Junior School, Bristol, used maps of the school to plot areas to monitor, and timetabled the best times to record data, in small 'eco-teams'. Pupils then took photographs of appliances which were likely to produce light and heat pollution, designed and made posters and stickers to remind staff and other children to turn off lights and shut doors.

The pupils monitored light and temperature levels for another week, then compared the data from week 1 to week 2, noting a considerable reduction in energy use and corresponding changes in light and temperature levels. As a result of this project the school now has weekly eco-awards in during the 'Achievement Assembly', and Y5 pupils made suggestions to school council on how to make further energy savings.

How can we reduce noise pollution around the school?

Children measuring noise levels

At Christ Church Primay school in Hanham, near Bristol, Y5 pupils decided to monitor sound levels around the school, implementing changes to reduce sound pollution. They made predictions that Reception class would be noisy all day, whilst other classrooms would have highest sound levels when children were entering or leaving. Y6 they predicted would be quiet all day because of SATs revision! These predictions were largely confirmed by analysing the resulting line graphs, and children began to appreciate the value of dataloggers in producing graphs over a period of time which could 'tell a story'.

Children at Longwell Green Primary School near Bristol started their eco-monitoring project by making 'emotion' maps of the school, shading areas which they felt more or less comfortable with. They wondered whether these feelings were related to the ambient noise levels in different parts of the school. They planned a route for the data logging, making sure they walked past or through some of the main noisy and quiet areas. They walked the route five times at different times of day in order to see whether there were any differences. Children noticed that the classes that are closest to the playground or walk through corridors seem to be disturbed the most. They proposed the following solutions:

Have class corridor monitors that wear a sash and encourage people to be quiet in the corridor and tell the teacher anyone who isn't.

Remind children to walk quietly to and from the hall. The monitors could stand at the front and back of the line.

Teachers collect the children from KS2 assembly.

Cone off areas near KS2 classrooms to stop KS1 children banging on the classroom windows and playing near the classrooms where children are working.

Make posters for problem areas.

Data examples
Are playgrounds close to the road more polluted?

At St Philip's Primary School, Bath, children put one datalogger in the junior playground and one in the infant playground with a carbon monoxide sensor, for a whole school day. From the resulting graphs, they concluded that there was more carbon monoxide in the infant playground because it is next to the road, whilst there was no carbon monoxide in the junior playground from 10-11.30am because the playground is away from the road. The highest level was recorded at the end of the school day in the infant playground because lots of cars were coming to collect children from school.

What is the best habitat for pond creatures?

Using a temperature sensor

Y5 children at Cherry Gardens Primary School, South Gloucestershire, decided to link their school project to work in a local environmental education centre - Willsbridge Mill. At the request of staff at Willsbridge, they monitored the temperature at different depths in several local ponds - looking at effect of position, vegetation and depth of water on wildlife diversity.

Their visits also included monitoring a number of other environmental indicators around the site. The children drew a number of conclusions about the best habitats for wildlife within the Willsbridge ponds and wider site, making some recommendations for management of the environment.

See right for a video of presentation of pond project at children's science conference.

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As with all good scientific investigations, eco-monitoring projects need to start with a question. This can come by asking children to look around their classroom, school and local community for environmental problems. Perhaps it gets too hot (or too cold) in the classroom at different times of the year.

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Interactive WB games especially good

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Reading Games and Guided Reading with Roy the Zebra

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Roy the zebra is a free resource that's all about supporting emerging readers with their literacy skills, it's used at schools and at home. This site is a great introduction to the kind of content you'll find on our membership site Club Roy.

This site is home to an engaging range of reading, spelling, and punctuation games, as well as an exciting guided reading story, lesson plans, printable resources and even songs - it's totally free for you to use, all that we ask is that you register with us so that you can receive occasional updates via email.

Roy is aimed at 5 to 7 year-olds. It's often used as a tool to support readers who aren't progressing as expected - giving these readers an interesting and different resource builds their reading and spelling confidence and helps to establish an early 'love for reading'.
If you like the content on this free site then consider becoming a member of Club Roy.
Our guided reading story, adventure, suspense and humour...

Tale of a Singing Zebra is about Roy the zebra, he lives in the worst zoo in the world, locked up next door to his best friend Lucy the elephant. They dream of the wild. When George visits the zoo, he's sad for Roy and he thinks how he can help.

The nine mini-chapter story is an exciting, humorous and daring tale of Roy's escape and his adventures with George in search of the herd. Each chapter comes with before and after discussion sheets, optional narration, as-well-as a printable reading certificate and is iPad compatible.

Roy and George return in Operation Rescue Lucy, the mission to return Lucy to the wild. You can read it at Club Roy.

Engaging games and lesson plans

You'll find a wide variety of iPad compatible reading, punctuation and spelling games, from full stops and capital letters through to spelling CVC words and vowel digraphs and using singular and plural words. All the games use the fun characters from the Roy stories; they're quick to access, easy to play, engage with your early readers and come with a lesson plan.

About Club Roy

Club Roy is our membership site. It has 149 reading, spelling and punctuation games over 13 different topics and 16 game themes, Operation Rescue Lucy guided reading story plus more than 700 printable resources and is advert free. Club Roy aims to be an affordable resource to complement school reading systems and can be used at home as well.

The team behind www.roythezebra.com and Club Roy

Tim Bowerbank
Passionate about literacy, illustrator, writer and coder. The creator of Roy the zebra.

Emma Bowerbank
Creative, exceptional coder, and trained teacher.

Sue Bowerbank
Early years teacher for more than 40 years, advisor for game content, writer of engaging lesson plans plus design of printable resources.

Testimonials

Here are some testimonials made by teachers via our surveys.

"A fun site that I shall be using more and more in the future and I intend to pass it on to other staff."
"Thanks...very good site. I have designed some curricula myself and it's rare to find such a "step-by-step" reading program with no holes in it. You can literally go on from one point to the next. "
"I really love this! The story is very appealing and my year 1 pupil, in particular, really likes it. I teach individual pupils and this has enabled me to keep lessons fresh and fun. I am delighted with the worksheets too! More like this please!!"
"I think the story is great for young children. I love the interesting games and the worksheets. They really target reading and reading for enjoyment. The feedback for errors is instant in the IT games. Great work."
"A fun way to encourage reluctant readers in both decoding and comprehension."
"...it is a very good initiative for struggling readers"
"...children thoroughly enjoy the story, worksheets and games. They are willing and able now to predict what might happen next and are beginning to write their own sections independently."
"...Thank you so much for such a wonderful site for getting students excited about reading. The students had high interest in the story and I found it so easy to get them to do some higher order thinking and predicting with this story."
"...fun, website with tremendous potential. Children forget they are learning!"
"...This is a very useful and fun site. My first graders love it and so do I!"
"Thanks for the sacred job you are doing!"
"The children really like the interactive games. Well done for tackling all the awkward lit objectives - a great site thanks"
"...great story full of fine humour and witty puns all my young pupils LOVE it and want to read on... THANK YOU!"

Credits

Tim's business Fort Marketing created the website. Find out more at Fort Marketing.

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Roy the zebra is an online guided reading site with interactive literacy games. All the content is freely accessible and there are no areas with password protection. This reading website covers capital letters, full stops, high frequency words plus lots of other early literacy subjects.

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experiments and practical activities

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STEAM, STEM & Educational Activities For Kids ⋆ Raising Dragons

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Simple STEAM, STEM and educational activities for kids. Raising Dragons is dedicated to raising strong smart, amazing kids.

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The Cyber Security Challenge is a series of national competitions, learning programmes, and networking initiatives designed to identify, inspire and enable more EU citizens resident in the UK to become cyber security professionals.

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The National Crime Agency's CEOP Education team aim to help protect children and young people from online child sexual abuse.

We do this through our education programme, providing training, resources and information to professionals working with children, young people and their families.

I am:

Respecting me, you, us: building healthy relationships and creating positive cultures is a CEOP Education resource for 12 -14 year olds developed in association with clinical psychologist, Dr. Elly Hanson.

Under 18 and worried about online sexual abuse?
To report, click to visit the CEOP Safety Centre.

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The CEOP Education programme from the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Education Team aims to protect children and young people aged 4-18 from online child sexual abuse.

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Network, Internet & Web Search Planning This planning is designed to meet the following KS2 computing program of study aims in bold understand computer networks including the internet; how they can provide multiple services, such as the world wide web; and the opportunities they offer for communication and

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Changes faces into 3D talking 3D characters

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Animation and sharing

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Create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time!

This app is as fun as your own creativity. Act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight as scary monsters, or play the part of a Wild West bandit on the loose. You can even combine any characters however you want!

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots and learn more about Puppet Pals HD. Download Puppet Pals HD and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

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Lots of ideas how to use ICT in the classroom

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Shakespeare Schools Foundation - Mission & values

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world's largest youth drama festival lies at the heart of SSF's transformative process. Every year, we work with thousands of pupils from every community, background and school type across the UK. Months of preparation culminate in exhilarating performance evenings in professional theatres nationwide; a night which can give confidence and self esteem to last a lifetime.

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Problem solving and collaborative solution sharing

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Problem solving and collaborative solution sharing

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search

Enriching mathematics for all learners

A free-to-use collection of mathematics activities, lessons and problems designed to nurture curious, resourceful and confident learners of mathematics. Produced by The University of Cambridge.

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The Nrich Maths Project Cambridge,England. Mathematics resources for children,parents and teachers to enrich learning. Problems,children's solutions,interactivities,games,articles.

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Maths Zone Cool Learning Games - Maths Games and Learning Activties for Fun

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Maths dictionary

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There are a number of Maths dictionaries that you can buy in the shops. However, why not get your class to make their own one? They are more likely to remember the meanings of the terms if they have made the pages for themselves. The class (along with your help) can also choose vocabulary which is appropriate for their age range. Once it is made, the dictionary can be kept in the classroom as a valuable reference tool, which the children can refer to during their normal Maths activities.

Each day, you could also choose one term from the dictionary, and discuss its meaning with the class (giving examples of when it may be used).

Guidance for making a Maths Dictionary:

1) First of all, you need to decide which vocabulary to include in the dictionary. You could do this yourself, but you could also discuss the matter with the children. Below is a list of possible words that you might want to include (obviously this is not a complete list - just some suggestions):

You will also need to think about the following:

1. Variations of these words, and words which have the same meaning, e.g. Addition, Adding, Plus, +.

2. Words which have more than one meaning (e.g. square (the shape) and square (multiply a number by itself)).

3. The format / layout of the pages of the book. If there is to be a uniform layout, the children should be familiar with this. You could of course discuss the format of the book with the children, design a few different styles and ask them to choose the most suitable one. Three possible layouts are shown below.

2) Next, you need to decide which children are going to make each page (and which terms they are going to include on that page). They will obviously need to understand the mathematical vocabulary which they are going to define! As well as defining the meaning of the term, they could include examples of situations where that vocabulary can be used.

3) Once the children have made their page(s), you can put them all together to make the dictionary, which will be a valuable addition to your classroom's resources.

4) You could also look at some commercially available Maths dictionaries and compare your classes' to those.

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There are a number of Maths dictionaries that you can buy in the shops. However, why not get your class to make their own one? They are more likely to remember the meanings of the terms if they have made the pages for themselves.

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Play cool math games to make learning math fun! Practice math skills from preschool to 6th grade with these free games. Learn math skills like addition, multiplication, fractions, geometry and more. Filter games by grade level or topic.

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Play cool math games to make learning math fun! Practice math skills from preschool to 6th grade with these free games. Learn math skills like addition, multiplication, fractions, geometry and more. Filter games by grade level or topic.

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Mathematics is the study of numbers, calculations, shapes and equations, written using special notations and symbols.

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Math explained in easy language, plus puzzles, games, worksheets and an illustrated dictionary. For K-12 kids, teachers and parents.

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What is Talk for Writing?

Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version.

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Outstanding Teacher Training - Talk for Writing

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Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version.

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Distribution
An important, significant part of this whole process is what we do with whatever it is the pupils write. Traditionally, most of what is written goes into exercise books, which are sent to teachers who then mark them and hand them back. This means in terms of distribution this kind of writing only gets an audience of one, and that audience is not reading that piece for the prime reason of pleasure but of correcting it, and/or helping the writer develop/get better etc.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong per se with this, but there is a problem to my mind, if this is the main or only channel for helping a writer get better. Imagine instead, if we thought of a school which can behave most of the time as if it's a 'commissioning' body: it commissions writing from pupils so that it can be published and/or performed. The job of the school, then, would be to use as many different forms for the pupils' work as possible: on the print front that would include (as it does in many schools anyway) wall magazines, blogs, school bulletins, booklets, pamphlets, books in the library, books on sale at school fetes and parents' evenings. On the performance front that would include class performances and readings, performances by older to younger pupils and vice versa, whole school performances, parent-teacher-pupil joint performances, videos, powerpoint with audio performances, talking books etc and 'performance' could be made an important part of the informal curriculum so that it's studied.
Of course, under present conditions with so much testing, I realise that making this an objective is extremely hard. Yet where and when it happens, teachers can vouch for the fact that what is written ends up being read over and over again by other pupils (good for reading then!) and those who write have many reasons for 'getting things right' or 'improving the writing' - they want people to read and like what they read.
Performance has the power of interpretation on its side. With every act of preparing a piece for performance, the performer has to interpret what's been written. They have to decide on tone, rhythm, volume and movement and whether it does or does not fit the writing in question. This will involve talk and debate whether things are working right, and following performances, discussions can be focussed on what can we learn from each other, what did we see in that performance that we can try out ourselves.
The overall effect of seeing writing as a form of commissioning for publication and performance is that it starts to affect what is written, and how. Consider for example the strange fact that though film, TV and radio are massively important media for us in society, the curriculum downgrades or ignores the writing of scripts for performance. Why should, say, writing a story be any more important in status than writing a script of a story that is performed in front of an audience? Why is this sort of activity usually restricted to Christmas and end-of-year shows? If pupils are now writing stories and poems on computers, it's comparatively easy to turn these into blogs, online magazines and the like. There's no problem about restricting who can see these because there are always buttons which control this. This way an audience for the pupils' writing can be widened only so far as the school decides.
Again, in the area of non-fiction, this kind of written output can encourage the writing of reviews of books, films and song albums, reports of sports matches, school trips, debates and opinion columns. As with all writing, there are ways to make these better and raise their status as important ways to write. In so doing, this kind of writing becomes much less abstract. There is a built-in need to interest audiences which invites debate about what makes for an interesting/exciting/funny report or review? This can take us back to examples in the press to imitate and use for invention.
This is what was always called 'writing for purpose'. The digital media have made it comparatively easy to achieve this. And there's an added educational dimension to this. We constantly hear from ministers and the DfE about how education is supposed to equipping pupils for their later lives. Part of that is surely using whatever means are available to us to publish and distribute. Our phones, tablets and computers are massively powerful ways for us to disseminate ideas and by using them in schools, we can show pupils of all ages that they can be used for many different ways of communicating with each other.
Crucial to all this, then is that we involve the pupils in the 'means of production' - that they are part of the process of making the books, audio, video, websites, blogs etc., so that they learn how to do that as part of the process of writing. Writing isn't just a matter of putting words on the page. It's a matter of making writing part of a loop that includes real readers and getting involved in questions about how we get the writing to the reader, does just this. Where some pupils may not want to perform their work, others can do that, and the non-performer can perhaps be more involved in the 'means of production' side, should that be appropriate.
This matter of 'distribution', then, helps us achieve the aim of creating reading-writers and writing-readers, or as I would add in: reading-performing-writers and writing-performing-readers.
Even if what I've described here is unrealisable across a whole year, perhaps it can be achieved in times when, say, the curriculum can be suspended for a day or a week, or a fortnight perhaps after SATs, or the like. We could think of, say, a publication-performance week and a whole school goes flat out in getting all these different things made, done and 'out there'. Why not?

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Distribution An important, significant part of this whole process is what we do with whatever it is the pupils write. Traditionally, most of what is written goes into exercise books, which are sent to teachers who then mark them and hand them back.

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Topmarks: teaching resources, interactive resources, worksheets, homework, exam and revision help

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Searchable site of thousands of quality teaching resources, interactive resources, homework, exam and revision help. Useful for teachers, pupils and parents.

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Play in P1/2

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A movement to introduce a kindergarten stage for children aged three to seven

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For more than ten years, Kualo has offered cheap web hosting and domain name registration services to customers of all sizes across the world. We have fantastic uptime, fast 24x7 support and more features than you can shake a stick at. If you'??re interested in shaking sticks, that is.

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Preschool but wide relevance

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Teacher Tom. 61K likes. A blog about teaching and learning from preschoolers

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Get the Red Ted Art Book!

This book was designed to be colorful, fun and easy! All you need is paper, card and stationery supplies to complete the 60 projects in the book. Learning new skills along the way and enabling you to make endless crafts beyond the designs shared!

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Welcome! Browse over 2500 easy, do-able and fun crafts. Browse by Season spring summer fall winter I'm looking for... preschool crafts paper crafts all kids crafts Get the latest in your inbox! SUBSCRIBE Loading... SUBSCRIBE Loading... Thank you! You have successfully joined our subscriber list. Recent Crafts See All > Get the Red Ted Art...

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It's such a thrill when someone new lands in our sparkly corner of the universe.

Our business began by sharing what I was teaching in the art room that worked - and what didn't work. From my first blog post in 2009, teachers from around the world have shared their stories and struggles, asked for advice and direction. Now twelve years later, we couldn't be more proud to not only design lovely lessons, but to be a supportive guide through many art teachers' careers.

I'm so glad that your interest in children's art guided you to us. This page shares our story - how it all began plus I'll point out all the resources our team has created to help you create an art program, share art with your children or even start an art business of your own...

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We make teaching art to kids easy by providing elementary art lesson plans, kid's art tutorials and creative teaching resources.

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Educational resources on a variety of subjects and personal development.

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BBC Active > BBC Active Ideas and Resources > Introduction

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Adopting the Flipped Classroom Model in Universities

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Read how the Flipped Classroom Model can enhance learning by promoting home study and encouraging interative learning

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Not just the curriculum delivered at home but Empower kids to make regular, important, thoughtful decisions about their own learning, what they learn and how they learn it

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Will Richardson

Three words seem to be dancing around in my head of late when it comes to current thinking about education: "personalization," "engagement" and "flip." All three were on display on the vendor floor and in session rooms at last week's International Society for Technology in Education conference in San Diego, one of the largest ed tech conferences in the world attended by upward of 18,000 people.

At first blush, they are words that seem to promote a vision of better learning for kids. But as is so often the case in education, I'm not sure we as a community are spending enough time digging to parse what those words really mean, especially in the context of what deep learning now requires in a connected world.

Let's set some of that context first. The Web has changed or is changing just about everything when it comes to how we think about the ways in which we communicate, collaborate and create. It's had an enormous effect on media, business, politics and journalism, and its effect on education -- both higher ed and K-12 -- is beginning to be felt in earnest. Our kids (and we ourselves) are suddenly walking around with access to the sum of human knowledge in our pockets and connections to literally millions of potential teachers. It's a dramatic shift that requires new literacies to navigate all that access and, importantly, new dispositions to take advantage of it for learning.

At this sudden moment of abundance, I totally get why we want to "personalize" education for each child. We can truly individualize the classroom by using data-driven platforms to continually assess and track progress through any given curriculum and provide the most relevant content or resources to any given learner based on specific needs or learning styles. Personalization promises better student achievement and, I believe, a more effective delivery method than any one teacher with 25 or 30 students in a classroom can compete with. It's a no-brainer, right?

Well, I struggle with that picture on a couple of levels. First, ask just about any vendor of personalization technology what the intended outcome is and, with a little prodding, you'll get to this: better test scores. And, if that's what we value as the most important outcome of schooling, it's hard to argue that we're in the midst of a huge advance. But that's not what I value in a world of abundance. Our systems and assessments assume that neither content nor access to teachers is widely available, and that we must deliver a proscribed, fairly narrow curriculum to each child because if they don't have it in their heads when they need it, they will fail at the task. Technology and the Web has radically changed that concept.

We don't need personalization as much as we need to promote and give opportunities for our kids to do personal learning. And while they come from the same root, those two words are vastly different. "Personalized" learning is something that we do to kids; "personal" learning is something they do for themselves. In a world where we can explore almost every interest or passion in depth on our own or with others, it's crucially more important to have the dispositions and the skills to create our own educational opportunities, not be trained to wait for opportunities that someone else has selected for delivery.

Personalization comes at the expense of denying students opportunities to learn personally, forming the habits of mind and "network literacies" that will serve them much more effectively than most of the content knowledge that, as we know from experience, never gets applied in real life.

Similarly, the word "engagement" gets very little pushback in the conversation. Absolutely, I want my kids to be engaged in schools. But I marvel how that, in many schools I work with, the prevailing narrative seems to be that we can't engage kids without technology, without a smartphone, tablet computer or some other multimedia device or tool. Countless studies are being conducted that will no doubt show that engagement is on the rise -- at least in the short term. It's as if engaging them in learning without technology has become this impossible task.

In a word, that's bunk. If we can't engage our kids in ideas and explorations that require no technology, then we have surely lost our way. Big questions, passion, personal interest are what should drive our use of technology, not the other way around. Can the Web and laptops, et al., support and expand intrinsic engagement for those parts of the world that interest us? Absolutely! But while a multimedia textbook on an iPad may be more engaging than the dog-eared paper one we've been handing out for decades, a textbook is still a textbook. You want to really engage kids? Give them opportunities to learn personally, to create their own texts and courses of study, and to pursue that learning with others in and out of the classroom who share a passion.

Finally, it seems like everything is being "flipped" these days -- flipped classrooms, flipped teachers, flipped texts. For the uninitiated, the flipped concept suggests that we can now use technology to offload many of the more mundane classroom tasks -- lectures primarily. It's not hard to see the appeal, with the advent of Khan Academy and easy screencast-recording technology that allows any of us to give a lecture for homework and free up time for in-class problem-solving and discussion. But here's the thing: flipping is nothing new, and as it stands, most flipping that I see doesn't flip the most important switch that I've been discussing here -- moving ownership of learning away from the teacher and more toward the student.

As a high-school English teacher, I was flipping in the classroom in 1983, having my students read the literature at home and come into class ready to discuss it. That was flipping the curriculum, but it still wasn't flipping the control of the learning. By assigning the lecture at home, we're still in charge of delivering the curriculum, just at a different time. From what I've seen, flipping doesn't do much for helping kids become better learners in the sense of being able to drive their own education.

The larger point is this: This moment of huge disruption requires us to think deeply about our goals and practices as educators, and it requires us to think deeply about the language we use. Words matter. More importantly, our thinking about what we want our kids to learn and our changed roles in that process matters. I'm suggesting that right now, because of the Web and the plethora of new technologies, the best thing we can do for kids is empower them to make regular, important, thoughtful decisions about their own learning, what they learn and how they learn it, and to frame our use of language in that larger shift, not simply in the affordances for traditional curriculum delivery that the tools of the moment might bring.
Will Richardson is a parent, author, speaker and educator who has been writing about the intersection of social networks and learning for the past decade, most recently at WillRichardson.com. His award-winning books and presentations worldwide have ignited rich conversations around relevant school reform in the context of the huge impact the Web and other technologies are having on our ability to connect and learn with one another.

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Will Richardson Three words seem to be dancing around in my head of late when it comes to current thinking about education: "personalization," "engagement" and "flip." All three were on display on the vendor floor and in session rooms at last week's International Society for Technology in Education conference in San Diego, one of the largest ed tech conferences in the world attended by upward of 18,000 people.

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Computing without technology

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CS Unplugged is a collection of free teaching material that teaches Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around.

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Computing without technology

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We've compiled a list of all of our unplugged lessons for you to use in your classroom. Now you can teach the fundamentals of computer science, whether you have computers in your classroom or not!

We refer to lessons in which students are not working on a computer as "unplugged." Students will often work with pencil and paper or physical manipulatives. These are intentionally placed kinesthetic opportunities that help students digest complicated concepts in ways that relate to their own lives.

Unplugged lessons are particularly useful for building and maintaining a collaborative classroom environment, and they are useful touchstone experiences you can refer to when introducing more abstract concepts. Each of these activities can either be used alone or with other computer science lessons on related concepts.

Ages 4+, English only

Course

Lesson Plan

Concept

Video

Loops

Impacts of Computing

Course C

Sequencing

Loops

C.15 - Binary Bracelets
*Supplies: Markers. Optional - 18 black/18 white beads, 1 pipe cleaner per student
Binary is extremely important in the world of computers. The majority of computers today store all sorts of information in binary form. This lesson helps demonstrate how it is possible to take something from real life and translate it into a series of ons and offs.

Binary

Impacts of Computing

Digital Citizenship

Course F

Variables

For Loops

The following lessons are organized by concept and can be found in earlier versions of our CS Fundamentals courses. Additional resources you may want to consult as you plan to use these lessons include:

Digital Citizenship
Crowdsourcing

*Common Sense Education has a full Digital Citizenship Curriculum that includes many unplugged activities.

Functions

Functional Suncatchers
In this lesson, students will make a suncatcher out of string, beads, and a special charm. The students will follow a series of repetitive steps, then be asked to identify certain sets of "skills" that are duplicated several times. Once those skills are defined, they will be called from a main program and the whole beautiful process of creation will be recorded on a single sheet of paper. The final program will be geared toward the entire class, whatever their type of string, beads, and charms. To effectively allow for this, students will need to "abstract out" the details of their specific materials and create vague terms for an individual's supplies. This use of generic placeholders is a wonderful introduction to variables.

Lesson Video
See Lesson in Action
Activity Answer Key Assessment Answer Key

Algorithms

Dice Race
In this lesson, students will relate the concept of algorithms back to real-life activities by playing the Dice Race game. The goal here is to start building the skills to translate real-world situations to online scenarios and vice versa.

Computational Thinking

Computational Thinking with Monsters
With nothing but paper and markers, students will learn the four steps of computational thinking. After a brief introduction, students should be split into groups where they will have to create directions for other students to draw a specific monster (from a catalog of pre-selected monsters). The entire task must be decomposed, then teams will analyze all monsters in the catalog for patterns, abstract similar details from the monsters, then use that information to create an algorithm (directions) for another team to draw a certain monster. Teams will then switch algorithms with another group and draw the monster based on what that algorithm indicates. Is the drawing what the original team intended?

Persistence

Building a Foundation
New and unsolved problems are often pretty hard. If we want to have any chance of making something creative, useful, and clever, then we need to be willing to attack hard problems even if it means failing a few times before we succeed. In this lesson, students will be building a structure with common materials. The structure will be tested on its ability to hold a textbook for more than ten seconds. Most students will not get this right the first time, but it's important they push through and keep trying.

Abstraction

Mad Glibs
Abstraction is one of the most important skills for a computer scientist to understand. It simplifies problems and prevents unnecessary repetition. A good coder uses abstraction just about every time she creates a program. This activity will have your students analyze stories for differences so that they can abstract them away. Those abstracted stories become templates for fun and crazy new ones.

Variables ​

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We've compiled a list of all of our unplugged lessons for you to use in your classroom. Now you can teach the fundamentals of computer science, whether you have computers in your classroom or not! We refer to lessons in which students are not working on a computer as "unplugged."

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Easy staged progress in coding. Possible link to Directional Language in maths.

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J2Code meets all of the coding elements of the National Curriculum computing programmes of study for KS1 and KS2, 2014.

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English National Curriculum Computing

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Computing in the national curriculum A guide for primary teachers  

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Computing in the national curriculum A guide for primary teachers  

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science resources and lesson ideas

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STEM website - science resources and lesson plans

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STEM website - science resources and lesson plans

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STEM.org - Education Reimagined - The Original Credentialing Organization

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STEM.org is the longest continually-operating, privately-held STEM organization in America -serving schools, districts, organizations and the world's top brands in over 25 countries