I’ve written about the value of “mimic writing” in some of my books, and today read a post by Daniel Coyle that put the value of mimicry much more succinctly and and accurately than I have ever described it. But … Continue reading →

EdCanvas - http://www.edcanvas.com -  Create an interactive online lesson with this brilliant site. Upload and curate all the resources for a lesson in one place and access them with one click. The site works with Office files, PDFs, flash files, small videos, images and internet links and even connects to Google Drive and Dropbox. Then simply ...

This is a good an excuse as any to listen to a good song, and, at the same time, be reminded of the suffering the great nation had to endure earlier this year. Why not use this video as a springboard for a class discussion on natural disasters, for example? You might like to read this post on activities using songs.

So you make books for your kids?  If not you should! There are lots of different books you can find on the web, but most are very complex and take a lot of time!  As a teacher, I don't have the time to cut the middle of this paper and slice this page or fold this one into that one!  I need quick and simple! So here's a little video I made for 3 ...

Based on the fact this video has over nine million views on YouTube, I may be the last person who has seen it, but it’s still a great video to get students to think more carefully about their writing: addthis_url = ...

Following on from the recent blog challenge on raising awareness of disability access issues, I came across the Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign whilst watching Shaun the Sheep dvds with my daughter. The campaign is called “Creature Discomforts” and has very similar aims to the blog challenge – namely to get people to think about the way ...

It’s the end of the school year at the moment and most of my classes have been badgering for “Movie, teacher! Movie!” for some time.  Resistance would seem to be futile…. Basically, what they want to do is sit down and watch a film for the entirety of the lesson, “practising” their listening skills, but otherwise doing nothing.  The pedagogical ...

I've always loved this song (written by Jagger/Richards, and released on the Stones' Let It Bleed album towards the end of 1969), and, as you probably already know, I'm very fond of Playing for Change, too. They are good enough reasons for me to link it here in this blog.But how can we use it in our lessons, you might ask. Well, think about it and ...

I’m a big fan of “choose your own adventure” stories — having students read them, write them, and watch them. I’ve shared quite a few of them in two previous “The Best…” lists: The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories and The Best — And Easiest — Ways To [...]

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children - thanks to Greg Fuller for posting this on facebook….. There’s a lot of information here and obviously the most interesting thing for any class to do would be to pull out all the statistics that relate to their country and decide whether or not they agree with them, why, ...