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James Abela's Shop

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This great selection of resources covers my career as a teacher including resources from Economics and Computer Science as well as resources that other teachers have asked me to develop.

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This great selection of resources covers my career as a teacher including resources from Economics and Computer Science as well as resources that other teachers have asked me to develop.
Design a Computer Game Character
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Design a Computer Game Character

(6)
I made this for code club, but could easily be used as part of any game making course. It could also be used in English to develop characters for fiction and to encourage reluctant writers.
Dyslexia Poster
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Dyslexia Poster

(6)
To encourage others to understand what a Dyslexic person might be going through. Ideal for raising awareness of the condition and encouraging discussion. If you can't read the mirrored text in Adobe Reader you can just copy and paste it or I have provided text file for easy reference.
Creating Infographics.Handling data. Powerpoint.
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Creating Infographics.Handling data. Powerpoint.

(4)
This tutorial introduces infographics, which are used widely by communication professionals to share information and in some cases argue their case persuasively. I set this up to encourage year 7's to use Spreadsheets effectively, but this is even more useful for introducing staff to the idea of processing information into digestible chunks especially for Mathematics. Very useful for dyscalculia students.
Choosing colours for a PowerPoint
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Choosing colours for a PowerPoint

(1)
You might be surprised by what colour combinations students respond to. I have a number of SEN students that find certain colour combinations far easier to read. Great SEN tool to help students find most comfortable colour combinations. This can also be used in ICT to help students think about design combinations for PowerPoint.
Calculations with Roald Dahl's Matilda
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Calculations with Roald Dahl's Matilda

(3)
Although Matilda was supposed to be 5, I'd challenge any 5 year old to actually do this maths in their heads! If you are reading Matilda to a class, this is a very nice way to introduce Spreadsheets in KS2 or could be used as an exercise in KS3. You will need the book Matilda by Roald Dahl (Pages 45 - 47) to make full use of this exercise, but could be done as a standalone. Also a good example of real life Maths for a Maths lesson. (I would stress this is based on the book rather than the film, which has different Maths)
Helping the Teachers with ICT
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Helping the Teachers with ICT

(2)
This project encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning and improve the use of ICT in school. This could be a one-off project in an ICT lesson, a project extension for gifted and talented or something that school council investigates. It also could also be connected to a Digital Leaders project.
Visual Story Prompts Randomiser
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Visual Story Prompts Randomiser

(75)
This little PowerPoint randomiser whizzes through 20 writing prompts. Press the Up arrow key to stop it and space to space to start it again. You could also choose the prompts for you. For SEN students the visuals are useful to help engage students. Thanks to Writing Prompts Blog for most of the ideas. I have localised and added to the original 15.
Reading Speed Simple Test
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Reading Speed Simple Test

(3)
The link is a great little tool to show how fast somebody can read from Staples. I've also included a printable version from my Website, so that you can share with your class. This could be a nice little starter to lead into a discussion about how to improve reading and how the purpose changes the speed and technique used to read.
Using Word Clouds for SEN & as prompts
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Using Word Clouds for SEN & as prompts

(1)
Word Clouds are a great way to share vocabulary without making an obvious writing frame. Students with SEN can access the vocabulary and other students will appreciate the design. Not only that, but words at different angles make it more interesting to read and encourage dyslexic students to turn words around to visualise letters appropriately. Also different fonts can be used for easy reading. I've shown an example, which can be used for planning a holiday in England. There are also visual prompts included too. The tool Wordle makes it easy to make your own. (Free Website)
How to Quickly Make Comics
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How to Quickly Make Comics

(2)
This little presentation introduces Cartoon Story Maker. A great little application made by the Victorian State Government. The entire presentation was made using it and the first link shows you the end result it saves. The other link is to download the software for yourself. (Requires Adobe Flash to use)
Lesson First Aid Kit - Top 20 Fillers & Starters
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Lesson First Aid Kit - Top 20 Fillers & Starters

(1)
There are times when you're class is going wrong or a colleague is ill and you've been asked to cover, you have no plan, no materials and a textbook that is boring your students to tears... These fillers require no preparation and no equipment beyond a whiteboard, markers and some paper. These are my favourites and have got me out of more than one hole...
Master Slides - One Slide to Rule them all!
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Master Slides - One Slide to Rule them all!

(6)
This lesson shows how professionals make slides that are consistently excellent via the use of Master Slides. It includes a lesson plan, videos examples of how to layout Slide Masters and a couple of links to Youtube if you don't know how to use this feature of MS Office. This technique is very useful for the Edexcel GCSE and as a general skill in KS3.
Platformer using minimal code (Scratch)
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Platformer using minimal code (Scratch)

(7)
This little platform game uses the least code, I could possibly get away with. Nice for newbies to code a 'Mario' style game. Also my students tell me its actually quite a challenging little game. Easy coding doesn't necessarily mean an easy game...
Parental Help Leaflet (Online Safety)
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Parental Help Leaflet (Online Safety)

(5)
This project is designed to help students to think about the safe use of Social Networking sites in the guise of designing a leaflet for parents. Very useful, especially for year 9's who believe that they already know it all. Once made, sometimes the students create quality projects that are worth sharing with the parents. This project does NOT require any direct access to Social Networking sites, so is useful for schools who block Facebook etc.