What Can I Do With My Abacus?

Previously, I successfully asked for some help in making use of the counting stick(s) I have in my classroom. I now make much better use of them. In addition, the crowdsourced document is still there for others to use too. Now, another thing I have in my classroom is my large abacus. I use it a fair amount, but am sure I can use it more and better...

So, if you want ideas for how to use an abacus, or can offer some help, take a look at this document. Thanks in advance!

Parents' Resource Folder

In school, we use loads of resources to support learning. How often have parents spoken about not understanding something or needing more support? 

Well, get everything you've created and that's copyright free, that could be of use to children and their families for learning at home and stick it all in a Google Drive folder. Make the folder public and send home the link as a QR Code and TinyURL. As the year goes on, add to it...

Re-Blog: "From Me To You"

Recently, our Dropbox has been getting more and more visitors. This makes us happy - we like the idea of others benefiting from our online sharing. In part, this has been helped by UKEdChat starting to share some of what's in there.

On Staffrm, Liam explained why we set the shared Dropbox folder up:

"I make resources and I use them with my class. I'm paid to do that. However, if I put those resources somewhere that others can make use of them, other teachers and children can benefit from what I created. Why don't I charge for them?"

Click here to read the full post.

Need a Dropbox account? Get one here.

Create Your Own Interactive Resources

So, the curriculum's changing. Lots has been said, lots has been discussed. Some like; others don't like. Maybe you're a teacher very able when it comes to computational thinking, however you may be less au fait with this aspect of primary education.

We've both got an interest in computing. In recent years, we've run a Code Club and also ensured the coverage of computing in our junior school. 

Our latest development is to begin creating our own games and activities in Scratch to use in our classrooms and others across the school. Creating the resources yourself means they can the tailored to your own needs. Also, if you've got to teach and support children in computational thinking, it's a good idea to develop your own skills. Whilst developing those skills, create something that's useful to you!

Image credit: scratch.mit.edu

We're using Scratch because it's a reasonably easy place to start, projects and easily shared online and others can 'remix' the project to adapt it for their needs or wants. Other languages can of course be used too.

We began by creating this project to support this blog post. This uses Alan Peat resources and if you're using them too, why not remix the project to show the sentences you're wokring on?

Next, we created this project to accompany this blog post.

We're sure they'll be more to come from us. Our Scratch projects can all be found here: http://scratch.mit.edu/users/primaryideas.