Primary School Related Websites

Clickteaching: Free downloads of worksheets, lesson plans, activity ideas and teaching resources for primary schools, teachers and parents.

Snaith Primary School: The website is primarily designed for classroom use. Many of the units available loosely follow the structure of QCA schemes of work, with humour and interactivity added. You will find 1500 pages of classroom resources, worksheets and lesson plans for Key Stage 1 & 2. This includes Myths & Legends, Aztecs, Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, Vikings, Victorians, World War 2 and much more.

Literacy Lessons: Joy Simpson's website dedicated to literacy planning for years 8 to 11. Each year group is divided into terms and planning relating to the range for the term is listed covering fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. Each block of work is planned according to the latest ideas from the National Literacy Strategy and the DfES and shows the ways in which literacy teaching can be creative and fun for pupils. If you would like to reduce the amount of time you spend planning on a Sunday evening then visit the site and download the free lessons and resources.

Sciencezone: Contains interactive information pages designed to complement the national curriculum. Each page also contains an online quiz or other activity to aid assessment. Primarily aimed at year 5, though new materials are being developed.

Online Ideas: A free site where primary teachers and trainee teachers can find teaching resources and links to recommended web sites for every curriculum subject.

Stories from Rainbow's Edge: Designed to brighten KS2 Literacy Hour, Rainbow's Edge is a small village which contains most of the Nursery Rhyme characters that you have heard about. They spend their time wandering through the village telling their stories. But these stories are not their usual stories. They try to answer some unasked questions and are designed to make you think!

Infant Explorer: An excellent website for Key Stage 1 produced by teachers working with the Canterbury Environment Education Centre. Every term a new story designed to be used within the literacy hour is added and so far The Swan Story, In the Autumn and Sebastian's Waddle are available from the site. Each story encourages the children to explore seasonal changes in the environment and includes NLS keywords, photographs, moving graphics and sounds. The story contains interactive sections which encourages the use of email and provides opportunities for the children's work to be published on the site.

Gareth Pitchford's Primary Resources: Illustrated by humorous cartoons, Pitchford has provided a wide range of lesson ideas and resources for primary teachers. This includes a good section on Literacy Hour Resources such as 'Nouns and Adjectives Game', 'Lego Instructions', 'Types of Sentences', 'Conjunctions' and 'Thesaurus Work'. Pitchford, who teaches at Edleston Primary School, also provides materials for Maths, Science and Art and numerous links, including one to Paul Cockcroft's Literacy Hour Resources.

Loopy Land: As the title of this website suggests, Loopy Land provides a less traditional approach to delivering the National Curriculum. Lara Savory has made the material that she has been using with her Y6 group available to the Internet community. This includes, Liquorice Hour (new ideas for teaching the literacy hour), Loopy Learning Discussion (on-line debate), Left to Write (tips for teaching left-handed children) and Loopy Star Sites (ratings, with links, of other educational sites).

Children's Storybooks: This websites provides a collection of illustrated stories for young children to read online. Titles include Round Bird Can't Fly, Kitty Wants a Box, Buzzy Bee, The Counting Story, Alphabet, Animals Can See at the Zoo and Farm Animals. Some of the stories have linking activities such as Riddles, Maze and Colouring Book. The website also includes online stories for older children and young adults.

Zuzu: On this website Beck Underwood's artwork provides a stimulus for creative writing. Children can submit their work for possible online publication. Subject categories includes science-fiction, holidays and animals. The website also contains sections on Mysterious Stories, Poetry, Courageous Kids, Neighborhood Reports, Virtual Vacations, Interviews and Broadway Reviews.

Kids' Space: Launched in May 1995, Kids' Space was established to break down cultural, religious, ethnic and racial barriers between children of the world by promoting cross-cultural collaboration in creative projects. The site now features creative writing from more than 150 countries. The website also includes Kids' Space Communication for communication activities, such as penpals.

Under5s is the site for everyone involved in pre-school education and childcare; teachers, nursery nurses, students, child minders, nannies, and of course, parents. The creators of this website believe that preschool is the most important stage for learning; positive experiences provided at this time having a lifelong influence. The authors also believe that education should be fun, and actively encourage learning through play. The site has free information and resources, including - topic webs, lesson plans, worksheets, colouring pages, activities and more. It is also an interactive site with message boards, feedback forms and polls.

The Standards Site: The Standards Site is managed by the Department for Education and Employment's Standards and Effectiveness Unit (SEU). The main objective of the site is to supply teachers with "guidance and tools to help schools improve effectiveness, raise standards and reduce workload". This includes providing literacy materials and schemes of work. There is also a detailed section on 'The National Literacy Strategy' which contains material under headings such as 'What is Literacy?', 'About the Framework for Teaching', 'Resource Area', 'What is the Literacy Hour' and 'What should literate children be able to do.'

Little Animals Activity Centre: Another excellent website produced by the BBC for young children. Characters featured include Micky Maker, Digby Mole, Foxy Dancer, Count Hoot, Puzzlesnuff and Storybear. Each one has a set of activities for children including word and music games, riddles, mazes, math activities, treasure trials and interactive games.

Reading-Now has resources for building early word recognition skills. These teacher created materials provide the necessary practice to help students succeed in decoding and sight word recognition skills. The practice is done in context along with game cards, flash cards, and certificates for achieving success at each level. The veteran teacher-author enables students to practice with varied reinforcement activities.

History Ideas: A collection of twenty history activities for students aged between 5 and 11. Titles include Creative History, The Greek Alphabet, Perseus Role-Play, Boudicca's Revolt, Roman Invasions, Poor Tudors, Looking at Historical Objects, Greek Theatre, Our Roman Roads and Roman Britain.

Technology in the Classroom is a class website aimed at reaching two important objectives - giving children the opportunity to feel proud of their work as they see it appreciated by people not only from their own country but from all over the world and also that of encouraging teachers, through concrete examples, to look at ICT as an important teaching and learning tool. On this website children can have a look at their own work and that of others, they can play online educational games and search for information about sports, historical events etc.

Toftwood Infant School Resources: Click on the 'Resources' link to select from over 40 free games for use with Infant School children. Suitable for both home and school use, each game is listed with the corresponding learning objective, mostly Numeracy and Literacy. You will need to download the free Flash Player plug-in to play these games.

Solutions to Problems: A teacher designed site which seeks to share teaching ideas, lesson plans and resources to help busy teachers both in and out of the classroom. The site contains a number of pages linking to information, lesson ideas and homework guides relating to the different Key Stages and also an area where other teachers can share their own information, ideas and general solutions to everyday classroom problems.

Time to Teach is a site designed for teachers, parents and home-schoolers. It contains over 100 free, interactive and fun complete primary maths lessons. Eighty of these lessons closely follow the lesson plans issued from the British department of education and aimed at helping to teach children aged between 5 and 12. The lessons are sorted into year groups, and subdivided into which term to teach a particular lesson. This unique site only specializes in providing PowerPoint lessons for primary maths. The webmaster on the site is happy to consider primary maths PowerPoint lessons written by other teachers for inclusion on the site. If you send 10 or more complete lessons which are used, you get a free CD to say thank-you.

GlassForever: This web site is an online learning resource that promotes the benefits of glass recycling to a Key Stage 2 audience. GlassForever compares the journey of glass that is not recycled, looking at it’s negative environmental impact, against the journey of glass that is recycled and the benefits that recycling offers. The site employs a mixture of animation, video and interactive activities to cover the following areas: Why should we recycle glass? Why is glass useful? Where can we recycle our glass? How is glass recycled? How is glass made? What are bottles and jars used for? Why choose glass packaging? Additional features include games and a quiz for pupils, printable worksheets and planning documents for teachers.

SEN Teacher is a developing resources site, targeting parents and teachers of children with severe, profound or complex learning difficulties. Just over 30Mb of Windows freeware and printed materials are available, as well as links to other sources of SEN information and resources. The author splits his time 50:50 between teaching learning disabled and autistic teenagers and working as a consultant to the Learning Disabilities and Multimedia Research Project at the University of East London.

Indus Valley Civilisation: This website for teachers created by Ilona Aronovsky co-author of QCA recommended teaching materials, provide resourcing and teaching ideas, curriculum planning links, publications, and replica artefacts for sale. There are 100's of photos, tables of Indus ideograms and essays, all provided by leading archaeologists and scholars.

First School Years provides free educational resources for parents and teachers of young children. As well as worksheets, flashcards and teaching ideas, First School Years also includes: A search which enables visitors to choose any day during the year and find out historical events which occurred on that day and which may be of interest to the 4 to 8 age range. A 'Word List' section which allows educators to find lists of words containing a particular phoneme or grapheme or are related to a particular grammatical concept. A growing educational directory. A list of recommended books and publications categorised by subject. First School Years is continuously "under construction" with new worksheets and other resources being added on a weekly basis.

Story Street: A free companion website from Longman to accompany Story Street, the fiction strand of the new reading programme Literacy Land. However, this website is ideal for practising Literacy and ICT skills even if you don't use the Story Street books. You can take a virtual tour of Story Street, find out about and email the authors including Jeremy Strong or send a postcard to a friend. The Story Street School Magazine is updated termly with new articles, jokes and news and schools are invited to send in their own magazines for publication on the website. The website offers a registration facility to notify you when new materials and special offers of interest are added to the website.

Numeracy Software: This website is for primary school teachers who would like to make better use of ICT in their mathematics teaching. There are sections containing Numeracy News and Numeracy Links but the most valuable feature is probably the Free Downloads. Here you will find free resources to download, including pre-written spreadsheets, logo procedure files, My World screens, data files, PowerPoint Presentations etc. These cover all areas of mathematics and are suitable for a wide range of pupils.

Little Explorers: This website provides 1,885 illustrated dictionary entries. Each word is used in a meaningful example sentence. Most entries have links to a related web site. Just click on an underlined word (or its accompanying picture), and you'll link to a great web site related to it. A picture-dictionary format is used to link to hundreds of carefully-chosen child-friendly sites around the world. Since the pictures are links, even pre-readers can surf with a minimum of help and guidance from their favorite adult. Older kids can use Little Explorers as a school reference. This is the English version; just click to use the English-French, English-German, English-Italian, English-Portuguese, or the English-Spanish version.

Redbridge Literacy Website: This website is for all primary and secondary teachers of literacy, both within English and beyond. The site features downloadable lesson plans and resources, ideas to support literacy work in schools and relevant news and updates from official bodies, such as QCA, the National Literacy Strategy and OFSTED. The Key Stage 1 and 2 areas of the site are well established, and offer particular support to English Co-ordinators working in primary, whilst the Key Stage 3 area offers a whole range of Year 7 and 8 units of work in medium and short term planning formats, along with Literacy Across the Curriculum resources. The website also features details of all INSET courses, primary and secondary, run by the London Borough of Redbridge; these courses are open to teachers from all areas.

Tooter4kids: This website is for primary school teachers who would like to use the Internet for lots of information. This site was produced and maintained by Mrs. Susan Stein. You can use the Teacher Resource Page for 100's of links to poetry, language, science, social studies, writing, etc. Themes On Line offers many themes that you could use in the classroom. It is unique because it offers graphics, introductions, vocabulary explanations, poetry, quizzes, and word searches. Writing4Kids is a page where kids can submit their writing and have it published online for all to see. The kids also have a Kids Literacy Page, Homework Helpers, Kids Friendly LInks, and Favorite Links, along with Math, and Language links that are a safe surf. Teachers can also enjoy the use of the Back to School Page and Enjoying Literacy.

KidsMAPE: MAPE (Micros and Primary Education) is an organization that has played a pioneering role in using ICT in Britain. The KidsMAPE section of the website includes Greenfield Road (a 19th century database with differentiated activities), History Photo Quiz (dating photographs) and History Treasure Trials (Greece, Roman Empire, Tudors, Victorians and World War II).

Boggles World: The website is maintained by four teachers, two in Korea and one in each of Canada and the United States. Boggle's World is is a resource site for teachers who teach elementary and middle school English, ESL and EFL to children. The site hosts original materials that teachers download to supplement classroom activities. Worksheets include crosswords, word searches, worksheets, science activities, and lesson plans. There are also extensive flashcards exploring themes such as animal habitats and outer space. All materials have been teacher tested in EFL and ESL environments.

Mr. Jennings' Website: Graham Jennings is a teacher at Westdale Junior School in Mapperley. The purpose of his website is to share teaching resources with junior school colleagues. It also allows him to share his termly and weekly curriculum planning with pupils, parents and colleagues. Currently, the main teachers' resources are an index to the National Literacy Strategy Framework document and Science self-assessment/RoA sheets linked to the QCA Scheme of Work for Science at Key Stage 2.

Literacy Matters: The site specializes in providing free literacy lesson plans and resources for Early Years to Y7 teachers. The Medium term and weekly lesson plans are based on good texts and are cross referenced to the National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching objectives. The plans are written by former teachers who continue to try out these ideas in the classroom. The site also contains an 'Ask the Expert' section, a discussion forum and has many useful links.

Schoolsnet was launched in November 1999 to offer "parents, pupils and teachers an indispensable educational resource." Its primary section includes materials on Art, Design & Technology, Geography, History, ICT, Literacy, Music, Numeracy, Physical Education, Religious Education and Science.

Teaching Ideas Science: Teaching Ideas is a website for teachers who teach primary-age children (i.e. ages 5 to 11). The material is produced by Mark Warner, a teacher in a primary school in Kent. Although it has been designed with UK teachers in mind, all ideas can of course be used by teachers around the world. The science section includes activities entitled Wicked Science, Watching Snails, Moving and Growing, Habitats, Investigating Teeth, Conductors and Insulators, Friction and Transparency Experiment.

Activity Village attempts to entertain and educate the under-10s. It provides colouring pages, puzzles, printable crafts and games, worksheets and wallpaper! It also publishes a free newsletters that gives updates and new ideas. The people behind the website claim: "We believe that busy kids are happy kids and do our best to provide things for them to do! Visit here regularly, and your children need never be bored again."

Education Place: This website, created by the publisher, Houghton Mifflin, provides resources for teachers, students, and parents. Subjects covered includes Reading/Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Intervention, Professional Development, activities, games, and textbook support.

Artist Toolkit Encyclopedia is an in-depth guide to learning more about the building blocks of composition. Here you will see many examples of works of art that illustrate the visual elements and principles. Subjects covered include Line, Shape, Colour, Space, Texture, Balance, Emphasis, Movement and Rhythm.

BrainPOP is the leading producer of educational animated movies for students. The company creates original animated movies to explain concepts in a voice and visual style that is accessible, educational and entertaining for both children and adults. BrainPOP movies attempt to demystify Math, Science, Health, Technology and English topics.

FunBrain: A collection of online educational games. Most popular games at the moment include Math Baseball, Stay Afloat, Tic Tac Toe Squares, Grammar Gorillas, Fun March, Dare to be a Square, MathCar Racing, Where is That?, Connect the Dots and One False Move.

Learn for Life: This website by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust contains downloadable lesson plans, data sets, factfiles and images about water, wetlands and wetland life. Designed for primary school children, it is aimed at learning in both school and home and is linked closely to the English National Curriculum but adaptable for children living in other countries. There is also a Kid's Zone with a large collection of online games.

Juniorszone: This website provides online primary school education. This includes literacy and numeracy strategy material based on the national curriculum. Areas include e-learning, educational games, interactive learning, brain teasers, homework help, free online tutorial. Juniorszone assists parents, teachers to help kids learn at home and school.

Kid's Review: This website has been developed by parents who noticed first hand how easy it is to motivate children to use computers but how difficult it can be to motivate the same children to pick up and read a book. They also recognise how important other children's views are in book choice. Kids' Review enables children to share their own book reviews within a protected environment. A new Teacher Review section allows teachers to share their views on how these books can be used successfully with children.

EPSA: The European Primary Schools Association (EPSA) was created by four primary school teachers, (2 UK, 1 Italy, 1 Netherlands). The association's website provides free resources, ideas and information for any primary school teaching about Europe. There is a large selection of maps, flags, crests, and other images to download, including outline masters. There is a large section giving details about how to make links in Europe - and what to do once the links have been created. There are also some outline details of primary level education across Europe.

Primary School History: How did we get here? Where do we come from? History helps shed light on these big questions. It introduces children to an unfamiliar but important world - the past. Piecing together the picture of the past is a bit like detective work. Children use different kinds of evidence to find out about people's lives and events and how things have changed. Learning how to weigh up evidence and reach conclusions are just some of the skills children develop through studying the history of Britain and the wider world. As they do this, they begin to understand and remember a framework of significant events and people. This website produced by the Parent Centre explains how and why schools in Britain teach history.

SymbolWorld is a non-commercial website, providing safe, fun and easy to use on-line resources for symbol users. The ideas on the site have come from people with learning difficulties, their teachers and carers. The main section has a range of stories, both fiction and non-fiction, which are suitable for symbol users across the age range. There is a special section of stories which are designed especially for older readers with learning difficulties. The Learning section has a number of subject or topic categories with nonfiction material supporting formal and informal learning.

Nicky's Nursery Rhymes: Nicola Geier is a Nursery Nurse at a Nursery and Infants school. On her entertaining website you will find a collection of Nursery Rhymes, Poems and Songs, some modern and some traditional. You will also find a selection of drawings to download that children can colour in. Nicky's Nursery Rhymes is 'child safe' and free from banners, drop downs, or any other form of advertising. New items are being added on a daily basis. At the bottom of each page are common links to most of the sites areas. According to Nicola "within 15 minutes practice - most very young children are able to move around the site quite successfully on their own".

Aunty Math: The mission of the DuPage Children's Museum is to stimulate curiosity, creativity, thinking and problem solving among young children. Children's familiar experiences are expanded through self-directed, interactive exhibits and programs focusing on the integration of the arts and sciences. Its Aunty Math website is for infants and juniors and provides fortnightly challenges.

KidStory: Established in Sweden, KidStory works with children, educators, and researchers from various disciplines in the development process by building an interdisciplinary, intergenerational, international design team. KidStory develops the currently available technology to inherently support social learning experiences while concurrently developing novel technologies that can be used in the learning environments of tomorrow. The third year of the project is now completed.

Through The Glass Wall: Popular culture offers little outside-of-school support for children's mathematical learning. Computer games are a potential exception. These games exert a tremendous pull on some children. While many games purport to be educational and even to promote children's mathematical learning, there is little research to support these claims. Researchers are beginning to get a handle on the conditions under which students learn mathematics in school, yet almost nothing is known about how computer game-playing can support and extend children's knowledge of mathematics. For many girls, the computer's screen seems to be a kind of glass wall. They are allowed to glimpse its worlds from a distance, but are not invited inside. This issue is explored in this research being carried out by TERC in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

All About Animals: This is a pictorial database designed for pupils in Key Stage One. The database can be used to support the teaching of ICT, particularly Unit 2C of the QCA Scheme of Work: Finding Information. It is also a useful non-fiction resource for use in Literacy. There are currently records on 65 animals, grouped according to habitat and listed in alphabetical order in the index. For each animal in the database there is a simple description with a large image. Clicking on the 'Find Out More' button gives access to more detailed information, while the Back button allows the user to retrace their steps. All the images and fact files about the animals are available as Word files which can be printed out or adapted as necessary by the teacher.

Big Sums: Another excellent resource from the Northumberland Grid for Learning. These two maths programs are aimed at using with projectors and whole class teaching. They can however be used with small groups around a standard monitor. The screens start with the maximum numbers set to 10 but this can be altered by the user. The main screen allows the user to hide or show the first, second or answer digits. Numbers can also be changed whilst they are hidden. The resources on this website are freely available for use in education establishments but must not be used for commercial purposes or distributed on other websites.

Phonmena: A simple computer program that teaches children to distinguish between sounds can dramatically boost their listening skills. It can allow them to progress by the equivalent of two years in just a few weeks, the game's creator claims. The game, called Phonomena, was devised by David Moore of the University of Oxford, UK, as an aid for children with language problems, but he says his latest trials also show that it can help any child. Other experts, however, are reserving judgement until independent tests are carried out. Phonomena is designed to improve children's ability to distinguish between different phonemes, the basic sounds that form the building blocks of language. Up to a fifth of all children are thought to have problems hearing the differences between some sounds, says Moore, who heads the UK Medical Research Council's Institute of Hearing Research.

Mighty Jungulator: Futurelab, the research centre based in Bristol, works with partners on projects that put prototype ICT packages. It does not develop commercial products. Instead, it attempts to test the educational potential of new technologies. For example, they have recently worked with Nathan Hughes, a professional sound and animation expert, to help children from Bristol's Luckwell primary school produce an animated advent calendar. The project used a prototype 3D animating program called Virtual Puppeteers alongside the Mighty Jungulation music manipulation tool.

Home Education Advisory Service: HEAS is a national home education charity based in the United Kingdom. It is dedicated to the provision of advice and practical support for families who wish to educate their children at home in preference to sending them to school. Interest in home education is increasing and HEAS recognises that reliable information should be available for everyone. HEAS offers information for home educators including advice about educational materials, resources, GCSE examinations, special educational needs, information technology, legal matters and curriculum design. HEAS produces a range of leaflets and the Home Education Handbook. In addition HEAS subscribers receive the quarterly HEAS Bulletin, access to the Advice Line, contacts with other subscribers and the HEAS registration card (for home educating families) which gives free or reduced rates of admission to certain museums and sites of interest.

Home Education: Since 1870 the state has increasingly usurped parents rights and responsibilities as educators of our 5 to 16 year old children using the argument that this is in children's best interests. However, some argue that in reality state education has always been in the best interests of state and industry. This website is a celebration of families as providers, of education and parenting. The law in the UK is quite clear, parents rightly remain responsible for the education of their children regardless of whether they are in school or out of it. The state reserves the right to make enquiries should they believe that this responsibility is not being met and to offer an alternative educational environment to the home to those who wish to use it.