Primary School Websites

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.

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

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!

Sebastian Swan: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.