Storybook

Storybook is a great website with games, word banks and videos about a collection of stories written by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers. It would be a prerequisite to have the books of course and the books in question are Never Keep a Python as a Pet, Katie Morag and the New Pier, My Little Brother, I Can’t go to Sleep, The Bunk-Bed Bus, Backseat’s Special Day, Oh No Peedie Peebles and The Snow Lambs. Teachers of the younger classes my well be familiar with some of these and hopefully have them in their libarary. If so the website is for you.

The sie has interactive activities for each of the stories including bright, fun games and choosing the correct letter to complete words from the story. There are also videos of the authors talking about their story and reading excerpts. If you have these stories I highly reccomend using this website. It is suitable for children from Junior Infants to possibly 2nd class at a push.

Tasts Buds – Safe Food

The Safe Food website offer a collection of interactive presentations and activities on the origins of food, food safety and healthiness. There are 8 interactive sessions in all covering the food and nutrition element of the SPHE program. Each of the sessions consists of classroom slides, extension activities, teacher’s notes and homework suggestions. It is aimed at 8-10 year olds so I suppose could be used from 2nd class up to 5th. The positive messages that will be taken from the activities are about eating healthy food and living a healthy lifestyle.

Mapping Our World

The Mapping Our World website was set up by Oxfam to educate children about mapping and globe projections. This is required material in the Geography curriculum for 5th and 6th classes, falling under the Maps, globes and graphical skills unit in the Skills and Concepts Development strand. The site is made up of 3 seperate lessons, each of which has around 40 minutes of material including videos and interactive activities. Teacher notes are supplied for each of the lessons, making using the website foolproof.  I really like this website and the children do too. The site has won a Geographical Association Gold award and a BAFTA award for primary learning so they must be doing something right.

Planet 10 – The Solar System

The Solar System is a topic that children find interesting and are eager to learn and with the help of the Planet 10 website learning about the planets becomes even more fun. Children enter a virtual Solar System with accompanying eerie music, where they can take a tour of the Solar System, zooming in and out on different planets and changing the viewing angle. Children can also find out information about all the planets, the Sun, comets and asteroids.

The website also includes a great game where children create their own planet. They get to chose the size, tilt, chemical make up, position in relation to the sun and a whole host of others before launching the planet into the Solar System to see how it gets on.

While on the topic of the Solar System I recently discovered, thanks to a 6th class student, that you can explore the Moon and Mars using Google Earth and it is also possible to explore the stars using Google Space.

Lastly, if like me you are frustrated by youtube being blocked in school I have found a website called videojug which is not blocked in schools and has some educational videos including the following, relating to Earth and the Solar System:
All About Earth
The Planets Explained
The Seasons Explained

The Tomb of Perneb (Ancient Egypt)

The Tomb of Perneb website is run by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and aims to educate children about the construction of the tomb and how it ended up in New York. The theme ties in with the Early People and Ancient Societies strand of History and would suit the children in the senior cycle (probably only 5th and 6th classes).

The website is split into 3 parts. In the first of these parts children learn why tombs were built, how they were built and what they contained. Children can view of virtual 3-D tour of the tomb and see what would have been in there. The 2nd part of the website deals with the discovery and excavation of the tomb and the eventual transportation of the tomb to New York. The final part of the website deals with the tomb today and children can watch videos of the museum curator and others speak about the tomb.

Also included in the site are an interactive crossword and details for an Art lesson on making a papyrus scroll with Egyptian Hieroglyphics on it.

Badger Wood – Environmental Awareness

Badger Wood is an interactive website which teaches children about the affects road building can have on woodland areas. It is another bright, colourful website with plenty of information. It focuses on the environmental damage and how the different species of the woodlands are affected. The site includes an interactive game where children search the forest to find the animals that live there and to ask them questions. So really the site works twofold – it teaches the children about protecting the environment and it teaches them about the different animals that live in a woodland. The site fits in nicely with the Environmental Awareness and Care strands of Science and Geography. It also ties in with the Living Things strand in Science. It is aimed more for the middle classes (1st-4th) as the older children will probably find it a bit too childish.

Safety in the Home

This is a great interactive website about safety in the home, probably geared more at the younger classes. It’s bright, colourful and has some great sound effects. The website can be directly applied to the ‘Safety and Protection’ strand of the SPHE curriculum. It goes through safety in all areas of the home – kitchen, living room, the bedroom and the garden. It also shows children what to do in the event of a fire in the house. It’s a great opportunity to make your SPHE lessons come alive on the whiteboard, because I know from personal experience there are not too many chances to do so.

Van Basco Karaoke Player

Van Basco is another fantastic piece of free software that once you’re used to will become a part of your weekly teaching, particularly if you’re as bad a singer as me. Van Basco is basically a free karaoke machine which plays the music of a song and displays the words on the screen, which go red when they are to be sung. It is especially useful for those teachers who are not as confident teaching music and songs. There are thousands of songs available which can be searched for on the Van Basco Midi (songs) Search page. Bear in mind that not all songs have lyrics with them so try to find the ones that say “lyrics” after the song title.  The screenshot below shows “When I’m 64″ by the Beatles being played.  Songs are constantly being updated and they have a lot of modern songs that the kids love.

The Hat

The Hat is a really useful free piece of software that can be downloaded and used in any classroom. It is a very basic programme which performs a draw as if you had put a bunch of names into a hat and selected at random. The children find that it is the fairest and most fun way of picking people for jobs, presenting projects, getting free newspapers, etc. Not only can you draw out a name at a time but you can also draw out pairs of names. I have used this when doing projects in pairs and I’m sure I will find many more uses for it.

Another area where this comes in handy is for playing games like Bingo in Irish. For example we were doing the counties of Ireland last week and I quickly entered the names into the hat and picked the counties using the software. It plays a great drumroll before displaying each name and the children really enjoy it and they won’t complain about it being unfair.

Countdown Game

The Countdown Game website, based on the Countdown TV show, is a resource that children in my class love. The 3 games that are played on the show can now be played on an Interactive Whiteboard. I tend to use these as starters to a maths or literacy lesson . In the ‘Letters Game’ children  select from vowels and consonants, with the aim being to create the longest word in 30 seconds. In the ‘Numbers Game’ children select their large and small numbers and try to reach a given target using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within 30 seconds. The ‘Conundrum Game’ asks you to find a 9 letter word from a jumble of letters but I have found that even 6th class find this one too difficult. You can find any potential Carol Vordemans in your class. My favourite part of the website is the fantastic Countdown music.

A useful tip when using any website on an Interactive Whiteboard is to put the page to fullscreen. This can be done by pressing the F11 key or by selecting View->Fullscreen on your browser.