Activity

Primary – Using Charles Dickens in PSHE

Activity One – Child Poverty Year 3 to Year 6 Child poverty was a major problem in the Victorian era, something that Charles Dickens knew all too well for himself having been sent to a workhouse after his father was put in a debtor’s prison. Many of his works… Read More

Secondary Maths – Simply take a set of white cards

Simply take … A set of white cards This is an activity that could be used to improve students understanding of types of number. Students could work in pairs initially, checking the problems that they write for each other before passing them on to other students to solve. Using… Read More

Primary General – Making Pizza

Pizza is a food loved by most children and careful preparation of it can mean it’s a really healthy food. Pizza can also be used as the basis for many different lessons and here are some of the ways we’ve used pizza in lessons. Activity One If you’re doing a… Read More

Primary Speaking and Listening – How well do you listen?

Over the years there’s been a lot of discussion over whether difficulties in following instructions are because of not listening carefully or because of not remembering. We did a little test on the children which turned into a regular practice session on listening skills. Give the children a sheet… Read More

Primary literacy – Make a documentary

Sticking with the theme of news, here’s an activity around documentary-making. There is often a local, national or international news article which poses questions or demands further research to ‘fill out’ the picture. In real life, this often takes the form of quickly put together documentaries. By putting together a… Read More

GCSE English – using the wordle

In case you haven’t yet explored it, Wordle is a programme which creates ‘word-clouds’ from text you provide. The clouds give greatest prominence to the words used most often in the text and the programme allows you to edit the layout, font and colour. At first I thought this… Read More

Primary cross-curricular – More fun ways to use the news

Next in our set of ‘Use the news’ activities, here’s an idea for every day that can be easily implemented and used to help speaking and listening skills. Activity 2: Reporting the News Fresh from their TV station exploits during the Have I Got News for You activity, some… Read More

GCSE English – teaching Non-fiction text with Gaga!

Have a go at this exercise that takes students through analysing a book extract, including opportunities to develop reading and writing non-fiction.  This one is about Lady Gaga’s book, Extreme Style and is suitable for students working towards a Grade C.  Here’s the first bit and then you can download… Read More

Secondary Maths – Simply take …A set of mini whiteboards

This is an activity that could be used to improve students understanding of evaluating expressions when substituting integers in expressions. Using a class set of mini whiteboards, ask each student to •    Write the numbers 1 to 6 in a column on the left hand side •    Write… Read More