Primary Teacher UK

Happy Birthday

A little late, but I want to thank all those readers that have helped Primary-Teacher-UK make it through it's first year.  We were officially 1 year old on the 27th August after my first post about the Myst computer game.  Since then we've gone from strength to strength becoming one of the most frequented teacher blogs in the UK!

This is only through your readership and this excellent help that I have had from the many people that have posted articles, emailed my links and taken the the time to let me know what you think about the site. So a big thank you to you all!

Let's hope that it can continue to grow as much in the coming year...

Andrew

Xplode Magazine for Children

Having got back from New York (see my Vox blog for more details on my trip) this morning we decided the bare cupboards needed filling so we headed to the local Tesco for some food.  What was the first thing that I saw in Tesco - a new magazine for children called Xplode.   

Xplode is a £3.99 magazine is aimed a 7-11 year olds sold exclusively in Tesco at the moment.  A new edition comes out every school holiday according to the blurb.  The magazine, which has a free cover CD, covers all the national curriculum subjects in a very 'magazine' orientated way and advertises itself as a way to help improve your SATS results.

I didn't get a chance to write down the website for the magazine - has anyone else got it?

Free resources

I received a comment from Janet from http://www.ispeek.co.uk/ offering links to free resources that could be useful, especially for teachers working with SEN pupils.

http://www.infoispeek.org/freeprintouts.htm - contains three printouts (bedtimes, shopping list and choose board).

http://www.ispeek.co.uk/index.asp?page=freebies.asp - contains twelve printouts (including feeling sad, feeling angry, getting dressed for school and making krispie cakes).

Please drop us a comment or an email if you come across a good site.

Resources update

My two resources (IWB labels and Today's timetable) have been updated. The IWB labels are designed to help teachers present lesson information and the timetable PowerPoint is useful for teachers who want to show a colourful saved copy of the day's timetable and notices to their classes with ease without having to write the same things on the board everyday.

The IWB Labels resource now contains more labels (Art and design, Assembly, Break, Circle time, Citizenship, Design and technology, Drama, French, Geography, German, Golden time, Groups, Guided reading, Guided writing, Handwriting, History, Homework, ICT, Important, Indoor PE, Language, Learning objective, Learning objectives, Literacy, Lunch, MFL, Music, Numeracy, Outdoor PE, PSHE, PSME, Reading, Religious education, Remember, Safety, Science, Spellings, Story, Success criteria, Swimming, Take ten, Today's timetable, Topic, Trip, Tutor, Walt and Wilf).

The Today's timetable resource has been updated with new labels and contains school related pictures on each slide.

To preview and download the resources, click below.

IWB pack - here

Today's timetable - here

Thanks and there's more...

Received this email from Shane Keates at McAfee:

Julie,

Thanks for the link, Much obliged.

You might also look at blog.siteadvisor.com - we've done lots of
investigations into sites that prey upon children, including smiley
sites that bundle spyware and kid sites with license agreements that
require a college degree to understand!

Shane Keats
McAfee, Inc.

It is probably worth having a look at this site too!

Apple recalls batteries now

Following on from the Dell battery recall there has been a similar recall in the for batteries in Apple notebooks. Details from the BBC:

Apple is recalling 28,000 faulty batteries used to power its 15-inch Powerbook G4 laptops. The faulty batteries have the model number A1045 and serial numbers that begin with HQ404, HQ405, HQ406, HQ407 or HQ408.

No other batteries for Powerbook or iBook laptops are affected by the recall. he computer maker has set up a free exchange programme to let consumers swap the faulty hardware for a fully working alternative.

TES Resources

Just been pointed in the direction of the TES Resource Bank, which is very good for Key Stage 1 resources. Everything from numberlines, worksheets, lesson plans, assessment tasks, games...

Just wanted tio remind you that it's a really good source especially for 'last minute' homework ideas.

Minibus Legal Question

Thanks to Peter King, the Community Transport Implementation Officer at Hampshire County Council for the answer to this question. 

The answer is "No, but...."  The regulations do not apply to minibuses - they only to apply to cars, people carriers of up to 8 passenger seats (eg. Ford Galaxy) and vans.  The "but" is that parents will expect the same level of safety for their children when travelling by minibus as when travelling by car.  And schools have a duty of care to their children.  So there is a strong argument to use booster seats for younger children. This will raise them up so that the diagonal belt is across their shoulder and does not cut into their neck (which would cause serious injuries or death in a severe accident). 

To summarise:  the new regulations do not apply to minibuses so you are not legally obliged to use booster seats.  But to meet your duty of care I would advise that you should use boosters for young children.

One final point:  many minibuses have 'all age' or 'generation' seat belts, where the upper mounting for the diagonal belt is adjustable for height. Always make sure that this is correctly adjusted for the height of the child i.e. lower for shorter children.

Peter King
Community Transport Implementation Officer
Hampshire County Council.

Comments

Thanks everybody who posted comments recently; your comments have not be lost of forgotton, but Andrew (who is on holiday in American) needs to approve some of them before they show on Primary Teacher UK. Some comments may show up within 24 hours, others may take longer, but eventually they will all be shown.

Please keep on commenting - we value your feedback.

Make a Mr Man/Little Miss

I just came across this little application which allows you to create your own Mr Men/Little Miss: http://www.kidstime.com/games/mrmen.htm.

What a great way for younger children to start a school year.

Enjoy.