Primary teachers share three of their best lesson ideas about data handling in Key Stage 2 maths. At Cuffley School, Year 3 turn data about their favourite school meals into a human bar graph. At The Wroxham School, Year 4 are doing Olympic Maths, measuring and record long jumps, high jumps and target practice, turning data into Venn diagrams and graphs. Year 3 are collecting data about time and use a Tardis in their class. The children go inside to estimate when thirty seconds has elapsed. At the end, the data is turned into a graph on the interactive whiteboard.

Three teachers share Great Lesson Ideas to boost pupils’ writing skills - and all the resources you need to use these ideas. The Super Sentence is a good regular KS2 activity which promotes understanding of different ways that sentences can be changed and improved. Next is The Wordscape, which stimulates students in the preparation of writing a description of a setting. Then Spelling Games shows a variety of simple, fun activities, suitable for Key Stages 1 and 2, to help make spelling lessons more engaging and stimulating.

In this Key Stage 2 literacy ‘Lesson Starters’, suitable for Years 3-6, each of the five short video clips provides a stimulus for pupils to employ a range of persuasive writing techniques. The first clip takes animals as a starting point - three children show us their pets, telling us why they are wonderful and giving one or two disadvantages or problems in looking after it. Two further clips focus on a local neighbourhood where we interview shopkeepers who talk about the area from a favourable and less favourable perspective shown alongside images of the area. There are two clips presenting the two sides of a local area. School uniform - short interviews with Year 5 children on the pros and cons of wearing a school uniform. The final clip presents three young people involved in campaigning for an NHS iniative - Smokefree Camden - in north London. We hear their own thoughts and feelings about stopping smoking which could lead to pupils designing and writing leaflets and fliers.

In Great Lesson Ideas, teachers at Eleanor Palmer School, London, demonstrate fun primary maths games. Headteacher, Kate Frood, and her enthusiastic staff use games to inspire their pupils, and share three of their best ideas - maths learning cleverly interwoven with some traditional fun and games. A Year 3 class plays a multiplication game using die and a Year 6 class try to establish the value of the word ‘table’, having been given the numeric value of some of the letters. Year 1 practise their ‘counting on’ skills in a simple dice game they call ‘Bird Race’.

Inspirational Key Stage 2 geography specialist, Jane Whittle, leads her class on a magical journey through the school's own woods, in ‘KS1/2 Geography’. The aim of the lesson is to create a map of their route but first, the children explore the woods picking up reminders of their experience along the way - leaves, moss, bottle tops, and so on which they fix to their own personal 'journey sticks'. Armed with sellotape, drawing pins and tons of enthusiasm, Jane and her class explore the personal nature of geography, the countryside code and elements of map-making.

There are four great lesson ideas in the programme presented by teachers from across the country. Year 2 teacher Jess Scott explains how to teach about pushes and pulls by inspiring her class to model a Big Bad Wolf. They are set to work in pairs, one describing which forces they are using as the other models. Is a pinch a push or a pull? Jess shares her tips for recording results and assessing. Deputy Tony Davies explains an intriguing way to introduce friction: the ‘jelly chopsticks’ race with added cooking oil! Year 5 teacher Kate Mottram sets her class the challenge of investigating which track will be best for their rocket balloons to fly down. She explains how this is a great way to teach about forces, friction and fair testing. The programme ends with a cracking idea from David Aston using paper helicopters. Each of the ideas includes an online lesson plan and lots of resources for viewers.

This programme reveals how the use of multi-sensory teaching can help dyslexic children become independent learners and boost their self esteem. It is crucial that children with dyslexia are encouraged to believe in themselves and to become independent learners from an early age. Kate Bodle, a specialist in teaching dyslexic children, works at Ewelme Church of England School in Oxfordshire. She uses a multi-sensory approach. Kate explains and demonstrates the approach in this programme. The importance of teaching continuous cursive handwriting and the need to 'overlearn' is also covered.

These ‘Lesson Starters’ are drawn from the home movies that British and German film-makers shot in World War II. They are designed to inspire primary history class-room thinking and discussion about the way children in Britain and Germany experienced evacuation, bombing, school life, and death. Each clip ends with a thought-provoking question. The archive ranges from the declaration of war listened to on a Cornish beach, to gas masks and air raid shelters, a short clip about school life in war time and the story of one woman’s blitz and the death of her three siblings.

Reception teacher, Rachel Atkins, receives advice from top inspector Clare Gillies and the Teachers TV online community as she tries to boost her lessons, in From Good to Outstanding. Tyssen Community School rates Reception teacher Rachel Atkins as ‘good’. As part of our challenge we bring in top inspector Clare Gillies to assess one of Rachel’s Reception class sessions. The inspector’s feedback after Rachel’s morning session highlights some clear areas for improvement. Rachel also gets feedback and advice from Teachers TV online community who watch footage of the session, which has physical development as its learning goal. She’s then off to our ‘clinic’ to get some one-to-one CPD from early years consultant Hilary Bell to work on pedagogy. Plus Rachel gets some tips from our presentation and communications expert Mo Shapiro. She then has just three weeks back in the classroom to put all their advice into action before inspector Clare Gillies returns to observe a second session and deliver her final verdict. Will Rachel make the grade? Does Rachel raise her game sufficiently to go from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’

An interactive story that encourages discussion of bullying. This programme, which has been designed for use in the classroom, helps tackle bullying by exploring the feelings of all those involved. Year 6 pupils from Hollickwood Primary School in north London, have created an interactive photo-story that follows the thoughts and actions of a bullying victim, the four children who bully him, and his classmates who suggest ways to help him.

Three great primary maths lesson ideas for geometry, shape and space, at two schools in Hertfordshire. Years 2 and 3 explore the characteristics of different shapes using long pieces of elastic, making large shapes in the classroom using their bodies. At The Wroxham School, Year 1 go on a shape hunt. This school has a Jeep on the school field and motorbike and sidecar in the library! The children are enthused by finding mathematical shapes in the real world. Back at Cuffley School Year 3 are turning 2D into 3D shape, using drinking straws and modelling dough.

THIS PROGRAMME AND THE ASSOCIATED CLIPS CONTAIN A LUNG DISSECTION AND SHOULD BE WATCHED FOR SUITABILITY BEFORE SHOWING TO STUDENTS As part of her research, Ceri meets asthmatic athlete Wayne Ashall, a 400 metre runner and hopeful for the 2012 Olympics. Wayne’s personal best is only seconds off the world record, but he’s hoping that Ceri’s work may be able to help him perform even better. Ceri and Wayne carry out a spirometry test, a common test to diagnose lung conditions and Ceri dissects a set of animal lungs to explain how the lungs work and the effects asthma has on the lungs. Medication plays a big part in enabling Wayne to compete, so Ceri takes Wayne through the different aspects of her research, which may lead to new treatments and possibly even a cure for asthma. There are curriculum materials fully integrated with the programme, plus additional CPD materials and bonus web clips.

Explore Antarctica in this video designed for KS1/2 geography and science lessons, looking at the area and how humans can live in such conditions. Describing where Antarctica is, what the climate is like and what it takes to live there, visiting teachers from England explain clothing, food they eat and how they travel around. Part of KS1/2 Antarctica series, the video relates to Unit 7 of the KS2 geography curriculum, and covers geographical enquiry and skills elements. It also links in with science Unit 4C: Keeping Warm, and Unit 3C(3): Choosing materials for a purpose. A group of British teachers embark on a four-week expedition to Antarctica and demonstrate how humans are able to live on the South Pole. Designed for use in KS1/2 geography and science lessons, the programme begins with an explanation of where Antarctica is, what the climate is like and what it takes to live there. The teachers then show what clothes people should wear in Antarctica, how they should travel and what food they should eat in order to survive such cold conditions. They also explore a science project that tests what effect the cold has on their bodies. .

Three ‘Great Lesson Ideas’ for developing primary children’s historical enquiry skills. In Artefact Pursuit children play a board game which encourages them to ask searching questions about objects from the past. They must also start to generate their own research questions and get research underway using books and the internet. In Shades of Grey children look at how historical figures shouldn’t be seen in terms of good and bad but in terms of the varied contributions they made to society at the time. The object is for children to also understand that perspectives of characters can change with time. In Luckiest Historian, Year 5 children build an understanding of the qualities of primary and secondary sources. The teacher uses cards to represent many kinds of historical sources and asks the children to put them in order of usefulness in terms of their reliability and their richness as a historical source. By ordering the sources they start to think about the value of different sources when doing particular historical research.

Great Lesson starters for KS3. This video is from Teachers TV: probability, ratio, symmetry, square numbers and circles This pupil programme is intended for teachers to use in sections, showing it to pupils on a whiteboard. There are five topics in the programme: probability, ratio and proportion, rotational symmetry, square numbers and circles. It is presented by maths expert Isaac Anoom in a scrapyard setting. - For each topic, Isaac poses a question and then offers a pause point - During the pause point, you can hold a freeze frame on the screen while your pupils discuss the question. There are 5 topics covered on this video 1. Probability 00.13 to 02.45, 2. Ratio and proportion 02.45 to 05.43, 3. Rotational symmetry 05.43 to 07.10, 4. Square numbers 07.10 to 09.51, 5. Investigating circles 09.51 to 13.43. For each topic, Isaac poses a question and then offers a pause point, during which you can hold a freeze frame on the screen while your pupils discuss the question.

Most teachers will have at least one pupil in their class displaying ADHD behaviour. At Manor Primary School, Year 5 class teacher Carol Hardwicke has found a number of strategies that particularly help her statemented ADHD pupils, but have also proved useful with the rest of the class: - Consistent and clear boundaries - putting rules in place at the start of the year and ensuring all staff stick to them - Chunking lessons and keeping them active - Using pre-teaching of learning journeys to ensure SEN pupils can contribute in class - Having an un-cluttered classroom and minimal, well-organised displays - Using visual timetables and sticking to daily routines - Judicious use of rewards for basic good behaviour to motivate SEN pupils

**Lesson starter ideas for teaching the Holocaust. Teachers should watch programme in full for suitability before showing to their class. ** This programme contains 6 KS3 lesson starters on the topic of the Holocaust: 1. These rare home movies capture the personal lives of a Jewish family in Germany in the years leading up to second world war. 2. A Jewish woman, born in Germany in 1924, talks about her work as a musician in a concentration camp orchestra. 3. A short video about the Wannsee conference, where senior Nazi officials gathered in 1942 to plan for the deportation and extermination of European Jews. 4. A Jewish woman born in Germany in the 1920s remembers her brother who was executed by the Gestapo for supporting the resistance movement. 5. Set in modern day Berlin, a Jewish man who survived Nazi Germany describes his extraordinary personal experience of the second world war. 6. This short video focuses on the life of one of few British Jews who was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

EYFS Today follows three early years centres to find out how they assess children. Clapham Manor Children’s Centre understands the importance of assessing the children to ensure that they are developing and progressing to their full potential. We follow Tammy as she uses complementary forms of observation and record-keeping including extended narrative notes and photographs in order to track and monitor several children’s progress. The Hall Day Nursery uses an extended written form of assessment, a PLOD (Possible Lines of Development). We follow Jess as she observes Oliver to inform his PLOD. At the Clifton Children’s Centre as well as the more formal methods of assessment they are also using video cameras to record observations. The programme follows Claire as she records Millie playing in the rain. The centre also edits the footage so only pivotal moments are kept to form a record for other practitioners and the parents. The programme also looks at how the cumulative information from assessments is used to support and improve the whole setting.

This programme for KS3 pupils contains four lesson starter ideas, each aimed at inspiring an imaginative speaking and listening activity. The programme consists of four short domestic dramas - Mum’s Birthday, The Noise, Grandma’s Junk and The Letter, all of which end with the four featured characters facing a difficult dilemma. The idea is that after watching one of the starters, students in groups of take on the roles of the different characters in the film and attempt to work out through discussion and debate what might happen next to resolve the dilemma. Some teachers may wish to extend this task by getting some groups to perform their version of “What Happens Next” in front of the class. Each mini-drama is followed by a list of questions for the pupils to help them think about the variety of ways the story might progress.

Year 5/6 teacher David Aston shows us how to encourage children to behave like scientists and separate materials by solving a mystery - just what are the ingredients of Alien Soup? His class uses sieves, filter paper and magnets to discover the answer. Meanwhile Sam Harvey demonstrates how, with simple ingredients from the kitchen cupboard, you can create a stunning irreversible change that leaves pupils open-mouthed. She also explains how this activity can be used to improve their prediction skills. The Snowman’s Coat is also an idea which involves children predicting. Will putting a coat on a snowman keep him colder? Or warm him up so he melts? Kate Widdowson’s Year 2 class test it out using ice cubes and socks. Year 5 teacher Lucy Blackmore rounds up with a DIY Lava Lamp idea using raisins and lemonade which encourages children to think like scientists when faced with an unexpected outcome.

Great Lesson Ideas on measures in primary maths - children have to estimate the volume of puddles, make muffins and concoct magic potions! At Cuffley School, Year 2 estimate the volume of water contained in a variety of different sized bottles. At The Wroxham School, Year 4 are making muffins, using scales to accurately follow the recipe. Whose muffins will be judged best, and why? Back at Cuffley School, Year 3’s teacher has turned herself into a witch! Her class measure different volumes of coloured potions accurately to make up a litre of their very own magic potion.