The Schools' News Service

Best Grades at GCSE Art and Design Best Grades at GCSE Art and Design will help your students make the most of their course and achieve higher grades than they might otherwise manage. It is full of information on what examiners are looking for, with particularly helpful advice on presentation and how to pick up [...]

Citizenship through Assembly Citizenship through Assembly provides 100 ideas for assembly topics with practical suggestions as to how these could be presented. Many of these topics could, if desired, be further developed in the classroom and used to develop discussion on actions and their consequences. Topics suggested include racism, smoking, success, bullying, adulthood, democracy, consideration, [...]

Unique experience in practical mathematics Booking opens on Monday February 22 for Techniquest’s inspirational mathematics programme Mathamagic. This specialised mathematical exhibition and presentation in Cardiff Bay covers many areas of the KS3 mathematics curriculum, and encourages pupils to want to learn more. Mathamagic runs for four weeks during the summer term and places tend to [...]

Clear Vision is pleased to announce a new online interactive resource for RE, Citizenship and community cohesion, for KS3&4 (12-16 years): Us and Them: Buddhism and community *Price £40 before 1st April* Five online sections link Buddhist teachings on community-building identity the self karma to topics such as identity and belonging volunteering and charities speech [...]

Free school resources An innovative way to teach Literacy through Sustainability One of the current problems facing teachers is finding resources that: 1. are time-saving and easy to use 2. link to the curriculum 3. engage and inspire students. Nationwide Education’s new Sustainable Communities programmes (for 12-14 and 14-16 year olds) offer free innovative, cross-curricular [...]

Who’s got all the really great ideas? The last time I looked I seemed to still have a brain, but by and large it was full of targets, initiatives and evaluations. What it wasn’t full of was great ideas. I suspect someone has been ransacking my head. I don’t think I am the only one [...]

How can we help students manage their stress so they achieve their best? One of the biggest problems with revision is that even saying the word ‘revise’ causes some pupils to put up emotional barriers and struggle to know what to do. Sometimes their reaction is to put off doing revision and this in the [...]

The start of each day in the classroom defines how that day continues Of course, as with all broad statements about teaching, it is possible to find exceptions, but as a general rule of thumb this one is not bad. The start of each lesson defines how that lesson continues. And although it can be [...]

What is the simplest way to ensure children’s items never get lost? The answer must be that each item of each child’s property (clothing, pencil case, satchel etc etc) is labelled. That bit is simple – as is the idea of asking parents to put the labels on all property. But then the problems arise. [...]

Success at the British Schoolgirl Ski Races The Cheltenham Ladies’ College Ski Teams achieved their best ever collective set of results at the British Schoolgirl Ski Races in Flaine in January. The A and B Ski Teams won 1st and 2nd places in both the Giant Slalom and the Combined. Annabel Lawrence, currently in Year [...]

We are hoping you may be able to help us in researching teachers’ needs regarding educational resources. Marketlink Research, an independent market research company specialising in the education sector, has been commissioned by a non-commercial organisation providing educational resources to schools to undertake a national programme of research about teachers’ needs from resources. The study [...]

Meeting your Sustainable Schools targets? Free resources to engage students One of the current problems facing schools is finding resources that: fulfil the Government’s Sustainable Schools targets link to the curriculum engage and inspire students. Becoming a Sustainable School not only involves the building itself and school ethos but also the education of students. The [...]

Ready made PSHE resources, lesson plans, work sheets… What none of us particularly likes doing is taking a gamble on ordering worksheets etc without really knowing what you are going to get. So we’ve produced ready made resources, lesson plans, work sheets, activities, assessments, interactive games and video clips for PSHE KS3 and KS4. And [...]

Rackets smashing hard INTENSITY ruled the courts at a school in Peterborough last week, as a collection of schools from across the county attended a badminton competition. Following a previous competition, the proceeding schools met at the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough. This school was only opened in September 2007, and was the largest to [...]

Managing stress and behaviour for staff and pupils In a recent survey by the Teachers’ Support Network, 42% of teachers said they had been depressed in the previous two years. 63% put it down to work and 33% said it was the combination of work and personal issues. In fact nearly 36,000 teaching professionals report [...]

Get your students thinking with this multiple choice quiz. This CD Rom contains 600 multiple choice questions based on AS Level Philosophy of Religion and Ethics. It comprises 3 separate tests of 200 questions each on the Foundation, Philosophy of Religion and Ethics Modules. Students are awarded points depending on how many attempts they require [...]

How can making one change to a classroom radically improve teaching and learning? Everyone involved in teaching and learning is concerned with the visual environment. We write clearly so that the child can read. We recognise the importance of adjusting the lighting in the room to compensate for gloomy days (lights on) or brilliant sunshine [...]

An NFER report commissioned by the then DfEE to assess the use of data in teaching and learning (Research Report No 671, 2006) reached the conclusion that “School-devised systems and Excel spreadsheets are the most popular data management tools” in Primary schools. But the question then arises, why do Primary teachers prefer these tools? Seemingly [...]

World Maths Day is a FREE online maths event which Unites the World in Numbers! It is the largest online global maths event and world record breaking in the number of correct maths questions answered over a 48 hour period! In 2009 World Maths Day was a huge success with almost 2 million young people [...]

To many teenagers, now is everything. The insult, pain, hurt, pleasure, fun, laughter of the moment dominates the student. The sense that the fun should stop or that the pain will go away is simply not there. Now is everything. Which is why it can take some students time to understand history in its fullest [...]

Reach for the Stars Induction Programme Running an induction programme for the new intake of year 7 pupils is one of the key ways of ensuring that the enthusiasm and excitement of the newcomers is developed in their first few weeks at school. One feeling is that if the programme itself has a vitality of [...]

One of the problems which can occur with Form Time is the issue of finding a variety of engaging subjects and topics that will interest the students, and have a meaningful educational impact. One can do it for one’s own specialist subject, but in other areas it can be difficult. The other issue is the [...]

College choir sings in international concert ANTICIPATION and excitement resided in 20 lucky students from Witchford Village College that were chosen to sing in the production of Peace Child Alpha Omega which took part on the 30th January at 7:30pm at the Ely cathedral. After weeks of practising and being coached by Mr Berthon, head [...]

Dance show at Churston Ferrers Grammar School This December we hosted our second ever dance show, a sequel to ‘Dance Around the World’ in 2006. ‘Step in Time’ was again linked with the school’s Humanities Specialist status, but this time with an historical slant. Through 40 separate dance routines, Step in Time was a show [...]

…by providing students with individual practice examination questions for homework, in the classroom under mock examination conditions, and then, leading up to the examination, a whole paper, without replicating that which has been used before. APT has, therefore, produced a set of up to 5 board specific practice examination papers for each A level unit [...]