Primary Ideas

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

Home Learning (a different view)… #E2BN14 / #TMBedford

Presentation about variety of tasks for children to complete at home.

Saturday, 10 May 2014

Ninth Collection of Apps for Your Primary Classroom

Another bunch of apps that we've given a go in our primary classrooms. We've found them useful and others may do too. Links are to the Apple App Store as we are operating iOS devices.

Image credit: www.apple.com

E-SAFETY

GENERAL

MATHS

LITERACY

See our other apps posts here.

Saturday, 26 April 2014

Averaging Speed in Maths

Driving along, observing the speed limit and I entered a section of road covered by average speed cameras. I understand how these work and therefore know a driver should drive at a constant speed, at or under the speed limit, in order to avoid encountering a conviction. However, I observed a young lady speeding in between cameras and then slowing for each one. She clearly did not understand the term 'average'. This lead me to think about how 'average' could be taught using these cameras as a real life context.

I have two possible methods for carrying out this investigation:

One: Using the formula for calculating speed: Speed = Distance ÷ Time. Give the children a set of data. The data being that for time taken for drivers to travel the distance between cameras. The data can be put into the formula and then the children work out which motorists are within the limit and those who are not.

Image credit: www.walesonline.co.uk

Two: Giving the children the driver's speed in between each camera on a road and then the children calculate an average of those speeds. Again, from this the children work out which motorists are within the limit and those who are not.

The first idea is more in line with how the system actually works. However, the second would work better in a primary classroom for calculating averages. We've made a resource to accompany the latter.

Also: See Stuart's very useful and helpful suggestions below.

Update: February 23, 2015

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Television - Beaming Ideas into your Livingroom!

"Don't watch the TV, it'll make your eyes square!"

"Sitting there all day will do you no good."

Indeed those are good points. Although, the first may not be scientifically accurate. We blogged a while ago about using an idea from a BBC show and we're confident most classes have had a go at the Countdown numbers or letters game.

Recently, we've made use of some ideas from School of Hard Sums. This was aided by some excellent resources from Stuart:

Langford Kebabs

World Cuisine

This made us thinks a little more. How about a classroom activity using Blankety Blank, Pointless, Eggheads Catchphrase and more...

Give it a go and as always. Let us know how you get on.

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Apps for Your Primary Classroom Huit

For the eighth and most recent time, here are some apps we've been making us of. Other bloggers may offer more information about the apps, but we've chosen to do it this way. Again, they're all apps we've actually made use of and although the link is direct to the iOS store, some apps may also be available on other devices too.

Image credit: www.apple.com

AUGMENTED REALITY

My Dragon Toy

GENERAL

Green Screen by Do Ink

Instant Buttons

The Pocket Curriculum

MATHS

On this occasion, we feel it would be good to point out that some above developers allowed up to try their apps for free. Please note that this in no way influences their appearances on this post.

Missed our other app posts? See them here.

Monday, 7 April 2014

4 Pics 1 Word in Your Classroom

On Saturday, I was sat near a child on a train who was playing 4 Pics 1 Word on his father's phone. Then, when I returned home, my other half was requesting help with a puzzle she was stuck on. In the way it often does, my mind struck up and started to ponder how this could be used in a classroom.

Idea 1: Children create their own puzzles for others to try to solve. Possibly using homophones or where the same word (eg stamp or smoking) can fall into a number of different word types:

Idea 2: During a topic of work (eg in geography or science), use the puzzles to introduce or recap vocabulary:

#4pics1word Blog post: http://t.co/PkeSVgQEUq Example: pic.twitter.com/m8hdXpylV3
— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) April 10, 2014

Idea 3: Use it as a method of introducing new vocabulary.

Note: We have not seen this idea anywhere else. Well done if you've come up with similar. As far as we're aware, creating one's own 4 Pics 1 Word is not copyright - please inform us otherwise if it is. Finally, the pictures used in our example all came from a Creative Commons Image Search - you should do the same (or take your own).

We gave it a go with a Year Five class. The class used iPad devices and the app Pic Collage. With very minimal instructions, here's what they came up with. The examples are also available to download from Dropbox.