Awen Media

Bit of a rush of websites to share today. I stumbled upon this one in a teachers magazine while waiting in the staffroom this afternoon for a training session to start. I think I may have bookmarked it before, but don't think I've blogged about it.

Awen Media is a Cardiff-based multimedia publisher specialising in the creation of fun educational interactive programs for children.

Awen's range of software is popular in primary schools and homes with parents, teachers and children alike. The products are designed to assist teachers and parents in the teaching and learning process, while keeping things fun for the children. All of their products are produced in both Welsh and English versions.

As well as the software you can purchase - they also have a number of fun, free activities that you can download and run offline on your own computers. They are simple flash exe files so there's nothing to actually install - as long as you're allowed to run them :)

These include a fun fridge magnet letters and numbers tool, a sudoku generator, a numnber spinner and a bubbles game. There's also a wordsearch generator.

You can access the free resources here.

Simple Science Videos

Here's a great site for using songs to help the teaching of Science in the classroom. Simple Science has videos for many KS2 topics with songs, and also explanations of some of the concepts; http://www.simplescience.net/

Videos are hosted on Vimeo, which means they are higher quality than YouTube, and also means they are accessible in schools that have blocked YouTube.

The videos are free on the website, but if you like them, you might want to buy a DVD of the high quality versions.


4F Electricity Song from Simple Science on Vimeo.

Senteo Questions

I haven't got round to writing that many question sets for my Senteo just yet, that's a job for the summer once I've got my other writing jobs done.

But, if you are looking for Senteo questions for Primary Science then can I point you in the direction of Mark Warners excellent Teaching Ideas website.

They don't have their own section, so you will need to look in each science page and pick them out, but there's plenty to choose from. The links to the three pages are below:

Life Processes
Materials
Physical Processes

A new venture

I haven't posted for a short while, I've been busy with a writing job that's taking a little longer than I expected (Adobe Captivate is fun but time consuming). Normal service will be resumed soon!

I just wanted to mention a new blog I've set up. It's not going to replace this one, just run parallel to it. In addition to my whiteboard training I am also a Science tutor for a teacher-training programme with a group of 20 PGCE trainee primary teachers. I wanted to set up something I could direct them to for help and information about some of the things that come up in the lectures, and also to highlight useful websites. We're nearly at the end of this academic year, but the plan is to get it established for next year's cohort.

If you are a primary teacher with an interest in Science then you might also find this blog interesting. You can find it at www.scittscience.co.uk