February 2008 - Posts

There are some new resources available from the KentNGfL games page, (they are very much open to change so please do suggest improvements):

Phase2 Sound Buttons - supports Letters and Sounds. Choose only the sets you are teaching to make new words.

Phase 3 and 4 Sound Buttons - supports Letters and Sounds. As above but includes sets 6 and 7 and a rotating rainbow of other phonemes.

Poop-Deck Pirates - supports Letters and Sounds phases 3 and 4. A pirate throws you a coin and you need to decide if it is a real word.

Wrist Communicator - If your role play area is for super heroes or people who help us why not download this game, (runs offline only), attach your DigiBlue and then paint your own wristband communicator. It will include your face in your communicator screen! Then make a wrist band to attach it to and go and call your super hero buddies!!

Printable downloads:

Houses with phonemes and envelopes to deliver, for use with your PIxie / Beebot. download

Beebot Cones to print out ad use as a target for your journey or hang cotton between two cones and lay phoneme cards over the top.


Beebot Cone Tops
to print out and place on top of your cones, (see above), add with phonemes or numbers.

 
Beebot / Pixie Non-Standard Units of Measure to print out and use to measure distances for your robot to travel or to plan your route.

Have fun, James.

Three useful websites to support science have been emailed to me. One is for fun and tests reaction times on tranquilising sheep.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf

The other two are more educational.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml

Science Revision material for KS2 Sats http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/leas/southwark/accounts/subjects/science/web/Resources/KS2%20SATs%20Revision%20Book/

Don't forget for more Science websites visit the Science Zone.

http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/subjects/science/

Andy

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Today, I would like to bring your attention to fantastic webquest that helps pupils understand the pitfalls of the intenet. The website looks, at first, to be fairly well put together and seems to be the ideal site to find out about Explorers. However, on closer inspection, pupils will hopefully spot that all of the Explorer biographies on the site are in fact fictional. While some of the facts are true or based on truth, many inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdity are mixed in indiscriminately. 

The website contains lesson plans for the teachers (see below). Why not divide your class up and let them do some research on Explorers. I wonder how many would just accept that everything on the website is true?

"The Indians were excited by the newcomers and their gadgets. They especially enjoyed using their cell phones and desktop computers. " Christopher Columbus

The main page to the website is: http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/

Lesson 1: Just Because It’s Out There Doesn’t Mean It’s Good.
http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/teachers/lesson1.html

Lesson 2: So How Do You Find the Good Stuff.  
http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/teachers/lesson2.html

Lesson 3: Google, What? 
Be sure to choose the search terms ahead of time so that there are no surprises. http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/teachers/lesson3.html

Lesson 4: So Where Am I, Anyway?
How to read the address or URL (Universal Resource Locator) of an internet page.
http://www.allaboutexplorers.com/teachers/lesson4.html

Another website to show the children is:
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus - Information and history of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

One for teachers is:
The Five W's of Cyberspace - How to evaluate a website for credibility

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This is your chance to find out how diet, exercise and sleep influence your class's memory and concentration levels.

Teachers TV is running a mass online science experiment to investigate children’s readiness to learn as part of National Science and Engineering Week  (10-14 March 2008), The Ready to Learn online activities are designed to be quick and fun for your pupils. They are accompanied by a range of free resources which can be integrated into the curriculum at each key stage.

You can find out more information and register your school by clicking on the link below:
http://www.teachers.tv/experiment

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Did you know you can receive our latest posts in one place, as soon as its published, without even having to visit the Kent Teachers Blog?

We've been posting blog entries for over two years now and realised that we never explained how you can subscribe to the Kent Teachers blog. Shame on us!

Step #1 - First, it's important to understand what you are doing when you are subscribing to a blog. Essentially you are setting it up so that when a new post is made to the blog you'll be automatically updated. Why is this so nice? It means that if you subscribe to several blogs, or websites, you can have all the updates delivered to one place.

Step #2 - You need a blog reader. There are literally dozens of free blog readers (often called RSS readers, aggregators, etc.) out there. I use iGoogle (http://www.google.com/ig). It is the first page I see when I open my internet browser. Straight away I can see any updates to the 20 or more blogs I subscribe too.

Step #3 - Now you've got your blog reader in place you need the details for subscribing to our blog. For most blog readers you'll need to plug a URL into your reader (this is called an RSS feed or an XML feed). To subscribe to our blog,  click on the RSS 2.0 link  on the blue band near the top of the page.

Adding a post to our blog

If you have found a good resource on the internet or have an item for our blog, please use the email link, on the blue band near the top of the page, to tell us.

With thanks to beckij  on the TES Forum

Here are some excellent resources for sci boosters we have been using this term, I can't recommend them highly enough. Hope they help:
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