Ed Balls' thematic teaching ideas for citizenship and healthy lifestyles aren’t really new

As an organisation responsible for providing exciting lesson plans and teaching ideas based content to educators, we think Mr Balls’ enquiry into the learning goals of 5-7 year olds at the Labour party conference could lead to some fascinating developments.

However many of the proposed learning goals which Mr. Balls announced yesterday are already achieved by the work which fantastic teachers up and down the country are already carrying out.

Much of what is being taught at primary level is thematic, with concepts that push beyond the boundaries of traditional subject areas – the fact that these concepts must ‘tick the box’ of National Curriculum lesson plan learning goals doesn’t get in the way of deeper understanding, or of wider social issues.

Take for instance this piece by the PETA foundation which discusses the role of animals in citizenship for 5-7 year olds, or this fantastic resource from Oxfam which provides teachers with a range of subject areas – from bullying, to cooperation, set within a fun and engaging context.

Write it right. Teaching English, and spelling in English

As an organisation which acts as a bridge between schools and the corporate world, we have to disagree with this announcement by Mr Wells - spelling continues to be very important. Until society at large agrees that mis-spelled words do not in any way reflect negatively on the person or organisation which writes them, businesses will insist on perfection, and as educators it is our job to help our kids prepare for this reality.

It doesn’t have to be onerous, there are some fantastic teaching ideas and teaching resources and lots of ways of engaging kids in spelling which are fun, human and relevant, such as this from the Teaching English organisation, and these primary resources from Sparkle box, which is a fantastic resource for foundation and KS1 lesson plans.

Teaching ideas for maths and ‘teaching to test’

Teachers come in for lots of criticism about teaching maths ‘to test’ The temptation to give the kids the chance to get the grades they need in a very competitive education environment is hard to resist.

One of the big things that can help is interactive lesson plans that are closely connected with the National Curriculum, lesson plans which do ‘ teach to test,’ but also aid deeper understanding, and are fun for kids to do.

On the www.free-teaching-resources.co.uk site you can find all sorts of great resources – including nrich which has great ideas for each and every key stage, and is helpfully mapped directly to the curriculum.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it?!

Teaching science, naming giants and the large hadron collider

In today’s excellent Guardian article by Tim Radford, he talks about the Shell research which looks at re-engaging kids in science learning, as there seems to be a sharp drop off of in their interest at about 14-16 years old.

With the BBC doing some great work publicising Big Bang day and people getting really involved in it – it makes sense to talk about science in schools right now. (Interestingly Mr R, even today how many people (let alone kids) would know the names of Max Planck or Werner Heisenberg – arguably the forefathers of the theory that has led to the Large Hadron Collider and all of this global hullabaloo?)

While it is only respectful to acknowledge the shoulders of the giants we stand upon (thanks Mr Newton), for a general education standpoint, the science is surely more important than the names, and there is some amazing lesson plans and free teaching resources to engage classrooms in science lessons that make no reference to Mme Curie, Isaac Newton, Einstein or anybody else.

Take a look at this stuff from the British National Space Centre, also this which helps kids (and us) understand more about quantum scale activities and of course Planet Science which is as good a science resource as you’ll find on the internet.

Geography, easy to find free primary resources and secondary resources for lessons

For primary kids as well as secondary schools, the lovely people at Countryside Access have put together some cracking ideas for use both in the classroom and when on field trips. They have also matched each part of their work to the key National Curriculum learning goals, and built the whole thing around video resources: they use those aardman creature comfort characters, which are really fun.

Also, if you don’t already know about SchoolZone, you should check it out – they host tonnes of resources that are very valuable – including this one from the Ordnance Survey which gives lesson plans and free maps for use in schools – it’s aimed at 11 year olds.

Finally for today, we want to draw your attention to fonesforschools, we’re pretty concerned with the health of the environment, and this is a great way of getting your kids involved in a project which can help in some way. There is also some key stage specific recycling activities here.

Has anyone out there used any of these resources in the past? How did it work out for you? Please leave a comment below – and please – no flaming.

Find teaching resources and primary resources quickly

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog. We’re a group of people who have dedicated the past few years helping develop teaching ideas and teacher resources for school classrooms in the UK.

We found that we’re not alone - there’s tonnes of lesson plans out there that have been created by schools, teachers, museums, corporations and charities – but sorting through it and finding stuff that’s easy to use and genuinely engaging is hard – which is why we set up free-teaching-resources.co.uk.

It’s a simple way to find the lessons you want, from the best providers in the world, organized cleanly and simply by subject area and key stage and in many cases reviewed by ourselves and other teachers too.

We hope to bring you new insights from around the web, and help you make your lessons topical and engaging for your kids quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

If you have any questions about any of the things we talk about, please get in touch, if you’d like to suggest ways to make the lesson plans stronger, or point to supplementary content – please do! and if you’d like to have your resources linked on our site or link back to us – please fire away!

Thanks for reading!