For Your Classroom... 50 Primary English Questions - Volume 1

We've written another book. This time, it's a book of question types that could be used in English lessons (and other subjects). There are 11 types of question and each question type comes with 5 examples. 
 

We hope it's useful. Is is available to download from iTunes Store or as a PDF file. Let us know if it's useful.

For Your Classroom... 50 Primary Maths Questions - Volume 1

We've written another book. This time, it's a book of question types that could be used in maths lessons (and other subjects). There are 11 types of question and each question type comes with 5 examples.

We hope it's useful. Is is available to download from iTunes Store or as a PDF file. Let us know if it's useful.

Publishing to iBooks

We've been aware, for a long time, of teachers publishing their work via iTunes. The work is available for download, looks professional and is easy to access. We've downloaded work by Lee Parkinson, Mark Anderson and others. It's something we aim to do more of too (when we get time to).

More recently, we've become aware of iTunes being used to publish children's work. Our inspiration came from the work by Cormac's class.

In 2015, we tried to get the children's work from one of our classes published to iBooks. But, we failed. Here's why. The children wrote their work in Google Docs. or Word and exported as a PDF that we then converted into an ePub. Apple would not accept this file. We couldn't work out some of the requirements of the uploading process. We gave up a little too quickly.

On a more positive note, here's how me made it work this year and what we'll do in the future...

1. The children all wrote their stories straight into Book Creator. 

2. These stories were then shared to Google Drive as a PDF and an ePub. 

3. The teacher took these from Google Drive (read each one for safeguarding and assessment) and collated them for uploading.

4. Individually, each one was submitted to the iTunes Store using iTunes Producer (only available for Mac OSX). Apple are particular about file sizes and dimensions for ePubs, front covers and page samples - read the requirements.

5. The first book took 2 days to appear live on the store. By the time the last few books were submitted, they were live within hours.

6. These books were then shared with the children's homes via a QR Code in their Reading Journal. As not all parents have access to the Apple devices, the stories were also uploaded to a public Google Drive folder. 

7. The children have enjoyed seeing their work online for others to read. Many have come back with stories about which members of their family read their work and where. It's not the most simple straightforward process, but it's well worth it. And, it gets easier with practise.

Please take a look at our work. Download at least one and let us know what you thought of it. 

@ThisIsLiamM Well done to you and all your class. Make sure to check iTunes Connect to get statistics on how many and where u get downloads

— Cormac Cahill (@CosmicCork) March 4, 2016

Our First Book: 'The Best of Primary Ideas 2011-2015'

Four years ago today, Liam and Dan met to set up this blog and the Twitter account attached to it. The aim: to share what we were doing in our classrooms with the wider world. Since that time, it's grown and grown. It now covers various social media sites and generates thousands of visitors per month. We're pleased it's been so useful to all those who have looked at what we share. We are full-time class teachers sharing our ideas as and when we can. As a bit of a summary of the past four years, we've published our first ePub, 'The Best of Primary Ideas 2011-2015'.

Take a look at the introduction to the book: "This book includes information that has previously been made available on our blog. The blog inspired after we both started using the internet to seek suggestions and ideas for our classrooms. Between them, Liam and Dan have over 24 years teaching experience. At the time of publishing this book, we've posted 140 blog posts. We hope this book will be the first of a number of books we have planned. If you have a colleague currently not reading blogs or teacher blogs are new to you, this book could provide a good introduction to what's on a teacher's blog." If you think it'll be useful, download a copy. In the future, we hope to publish some more of our thoughts and ideas in book format. 

Download from the iTunes Store or as a PDF file.