Languages

A FEAST OF FRENCH VOCAB

FOOD, COLOURS, THE BODY - AND A FEW FAMILIAR TALES

These resources contributed by teachers from the TES community enable pupils to learn and practise key French vocabulary in a fun and interactive way.

Wide-ranging materials are available covering common themes such as parts of the body, colours, food, time, family, greetings, as well as school- themed material for discussing classroom instructions and subjects.

There is also a selection of resources that are “image-only”, which means they can be easily adapted for any language and potentially provide extra support for teachers of English as an additional language and special educational needs.

Also included are some excellent illustrated resources for short stories in French so that children can hear the language in the context of familiar tales. These use animal vocabulary and include animations and offer a great way to foster a love of language in young children.

www.tes.co.ukfrench-vocab

NEWS

Green challenge

Development charity Practical Action has challenged students to look at inventions from the past 100 years then come up with an idea to promote more sustainable lives. Winners will receive a trip to New York or Rio de Janeiro to explain their idea to other young people and officials at the 2012 summit in Rio. www.geebiz.bizsml_guide.htm

Missing mummy

The Child Bereavement Charity is producing guidance for adults who read Missing Mummy by Rebecca Cobb, published this month by Macmillan Children’s Books. It is a picture book for children aged three-plus, dealing with the death of a parent. To help adults respond to issues that may arise when reading the book, the charity has a resource that can be downloaded free. www.childbereavement.org.uk

TES conference

Book your place at the inaugural TES SEN International Conference to be held in London, 14-15 October. Book before 15 September to be in with a chance to win an iPad2. www.tes.co.ukevents

ENGLISH

PERSUASIVE WRITING FOR STARTERS

Teachers TV video collection inspires KS2 pupils

This collection of videos from the much-loved Teachers TV Lesson Starters series can be used to stimulate a variety of persuasive writing activities with key stage 2 pupils. There are full-length videos to inspire all young writers, as well as shorter clips to spark their imaginations and save time.

www.tes.co.ukpersuasive-writing

NUMERACY

IT’S ALL A MATTER OF TIME

A helping hand with non-metric measurement

There are two main areas in learning about time: the duration of an event and intervals between events; and the recording of a particular time when something takes place - either in analogue or digital form.

Telling the time can be particularly challenging for children because the units of measurement have not been converted to a metric system. Numbers associated with time do not behave like “normal” numbers: for working out time problems, the common strategies of bridging through 10 or 100 are not usually appropriate and the intervals on the clock are 12 or 60, rather than the more familiar decimal landmarks.

The interactive resources in this collection help children to practise estimating and recording duration of familiar activities and work out intervals between events. Longer units of years, seasons and decades need to be understood alongside shorter units of seconds, minutes, hours and days.

www.tes.co.uktesiboard-time