Not everything here will be to your liking, but a great deal will be. There are activities, quizzes, games, numeracy planning grids and worksheet generators. You are almost bound to find something that will make life easier, make lessons more fun and give more enjoyment to pupils.

www.primaryresources.co.ukmathsmaths.htm

Don’t miss a thing...

Becta’s “Teachers Online” can keep you up-to-date. Consult this site regularly to find out all those things that you might have missed. There is an archive of past pages, news, projects, forums and case studies. The best parts of the site are the documents that deal with current issues such as wireless networking, thin clients, managed learning environments, policy writing, links with parents and open source software.

http:top.ngfl.gov.uknews.php3

Colour me in

Actually it is “Color” Theory because this is a US site, but don’t let that put you off. It is a sensible guide to the use of colour in art as an element like line, shape, form, texture and space. There are links to external sites, examples of student work and examples from artists such as Chagall and Cezanne. There are projects for children from seven upwards on forms of art and perspective, exercises with colour wheels, colour schemes and colour mood.

http:members.home.netmrsparker2intro.htm

Hear Seamus Heaney recite his poetry

Seamus Heaney is one of the most popular poets on the GCSE syllabuses. It is particularly good to have a site where you can not only read the poems and print them out, but can also hear the poems being read. The rhythms of poetry are often to do with the stresses that a poet places on words and the Irish accent gives a richness and authenticity to the experience.

www.ibiblio.orgipaheaneyindex.html

A new search engine

It is always good to find a new search engine that has useful features. Surfwax does. It is a metasearch engine, and searches by using a great number of the other search engines. Probably the most useful thing that it does is to provide scenarios of how people might use it to conduct a search. By looking at some of these you will discover that not only can you search in a comprehensive way, but you can review what you have found and store your search into something called an “info cubby”.

www.surfwax.com

Developments in ICT

ICT teachers are often neglected. Yet here you will find development plans, bids, assessment and monitoring and preparing for Ofsted. Perhaps the most useful are those pages that you can adapt for your own school and classes. Julie Yaxley’s six tutorials on making Web pages with Word are well worth having.

www.icteachers.co.ukresourcesresources_ict.htm

The age of the train

European Museum of the Year in 2001, the National Railway Museum in York is not just a website for anoraks. Railways have been an important part of history for 175 years. Here you will find “exhiblets” - digital exhibitions featuring material from the museum’s collection of locomotives, artefacts and photographsI The museum has a photographic archive of over 1.4 million images, but most of them are still awaiting digitisation. Railways posters and many great pictures taken recently of the railways in Scotland are also available.

www.nrm.org.uk

Star Tower lives

Star Tower, created by educational software “star” Mike Matson, used to be on the Apple site and it has now found its way to this site for primary schools. It is good to see its resurrection as it is an attractive and useful suite of programs that can be used both on- and offline. You will find activities here that you can use in the literacy and numeracy strategies. Mike has been ingenious enough to ensure that they are programmed economically.

www.mape.org.ukstartowermenu.html

Looking at buildings

“Manchester is one of England’s great cities, outstanding for its combination of Victorian architecture and industrial heritage. In the centre, grand civic and commercial architecture gives way on the south side to some of the most memorable streetscapes of the city, where 19th century and early 20th century commercial warehouses line the streets and the Rochdale Canal can be glimpsed.” How do I know this? “Looking at Buildings” told me. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner wrote a definitive guide to architecture across the UK. This is a site inspired by his work dealing with building types, styles and history.

www.lookingatbuildings.org.ukdevtestdefault.asp

Post the family... online

A participatory interactive Web project by artist Lories Novak, looking at how family photographs shape our memories. It has a growing archive of over 2,500 photographs and 200 stories. The most interesting part of Collected Visions is that you can submit images to an archive of family photographs and also create photo stories.

http:cvisions.cat.nyu.edumantleindex.html

Jack Kenny