Activities - Teaching Expertise

This series of classroom activities will be useful for SENCOs, teachers, assistants and mentors. Each page focuses on a different skill set – from spatial awareness to visual discrimination to semantic knowledge

Inspire your primary pupils with these science lesson ideas that combine essential scientific theory with magic tricks

Improvement in PE and sport can have cross curricular benefits across a pupil’s school career. Lisa Symonds looks at how a rejuvenated look at sport had a positive impact on SEN and G&T students, as well as on PSHE and self-confidence, at three schools across the UK

PE lesson plans are offered here by Crispin Andrews, who believes that striking and fielding activities can develop children’s thinking skills. The lesson plans for sport (cricket) are aimed at primary students in years 3 to 6

You can use the Olympic Games as inspiration for a number of activities across the primary curriculum, focusing on subjects such as sport, drama, literacy and design. Primary Know-How from PE & Sport Today offers loads of Olympic lesson plans and activities to get you started

This free teaching activity for primary school children will encourage their thinking skills, specifically encouraging active thinking and imagination

Anne de A’Echevarria explores Kagan’s Cooperative Learning pedagogy as part of her in-depth focus on the ‘Team Workers’ strand of the QCA’s Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills framework

This free geography resource for secondary school teachers concentrates on disease to be taught as a self-contained unit or as part of wider unit of work such as world development goals, urbanisation, inequality or controversial issues

Mike O’Neill offers the first of a series of teaching activities for leading gifted and talented coordinators to use in the classroom with G&T students and share with colleagues

Supporting learning is an important part of good early years practice with babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children. Early Years Update offers a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

The performances of sporting legends can be used to engage pupils in maths lessons. Crispin Andrews looks at this cross curricular method, including easy-to-implement examples

The Life Project provides transformational tools and practical skills to parents, educators and teens in the areas of life, work and relationships. Erica Sosna, director of The Life Project, describes three of the facilitated exploration techiniques they use

Jenni Clarke offers some practical suggestions on how to encourage young children to think

The importance of your relationship with parents of babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children is the focus of this article from Early Years Update. This is part of a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

This pack of free Christmas maths activities are suitable for primary school children of all abilities

This free SEAL resource aims to help students with emotional learning by introducing them to the “Happiness Curriculum”

These five SEAL activities, aimed at key stages 3-5, promote a whole-school approach to emotional wellbeing and emotional learning, by helping teachers to engage young people

This free resource is a Christmas themed play written for Key Stage 2 children

This free resource comprises of 10 traditional playground games for you to print out and use to enhance and enrich playtime

Early Years Update focuses on the importance of respectful relationships in environments with babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children. This is part of a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

This chapter from Thinking Through Primary Teaching is an excellent resource for primary school teachers to help develop pupils’ skills in writing and structuring their written responses

This free 11 page literacy resource focuses on creative thinking in literacy, art and design

This free teaching resource is a day-long enrichment activity taken from our recent publication, Enriching Science

This free maths resource provides two maths games for ages 7 to 11

This free maths resource provides two maths games for Key stage 3 pupils

After introducing enquiry, Anne de A’Echevarria helps students develop their own understanding of what enquiry is and how it might be structured using resources and practical activities, as a continuation of our in-depth focus on developing ‘independent enquirers’

Carol Hodge offers some ideas for activity based cross-curricular learning within an International Primary Curriculum (IPC)

This sequence of four lessons, one of our many free geography teaching resources, is based around the enquiry question ‘Should people be allowed to destroy the Amazon rainforest?’

A number of free enrichment activities for KS1 and KS2 from the world of science, designed to stimulate creative thinking and inquisitive learning, are available to download in this free gifted and talented resource from G&T Update

Ideal for those teaching geography in schools, this free downloadable resource is a card game that will encourage pupils to think and role-play on the issues of waste disposal

For key stage 3 geography: embedding logovisual thinking skills in your classrooms. This tried and tested lesson plan will help teachers to help students gain an understanding of environmental change and sustainable development

This free geography teaching resource can be used with primary and secondary school students, and is one of the many games and activities available for teachers in Using Games in School Geography

These primary and secondary enrichment activities explore ways to entertain pupils in their holidays, and consider whether video games are a good source of entertainment for young people

This primary assembly has a theatrical theme, using the phenomenon that is ‘High School Musical’ to explore the enjoyment of live theatre and celebrating differences read more

During the last few weeks before the summer holidays, use this secondary assembly to discuss issues such as whether school should be compulsory, and the minimum age for leaving. It also wishes students well during their holidays, and invites them to reflect on the year that has passed

Early Years Update focuses on the importance of health and well being with babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children. This is part of a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

How can outreach work effectively engage hard-to-reach community members? Partnership working and forward thinking has been successful in breaking down barriers to participation, as Nazia Hussain, project manager for Keighley extended schools cluster in Bradford, explains read more

How would you feel about a student critiquing your teaching style and lesson plans? Involving students in the teaching and learning process can promote agendas relating to student voice, believes Trevor Brittain

Staff at Park View Community School, Chester-Le-Street, describe how introducing a competence-based curriculum has enabled students and teachers to begin a learning journey

How can the process of developing thinking skills be put into practice? A glimpse into the environment within a day nursery in south-east England shows how read more

How can we encourage and develop young writers? Carol Archer describes an ambitious project designed to extend creativity and enable children to evaluate their own narrative and poetry read more

Early Years Update focuses on the importance of the personal and physical safety of babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children. This is part of a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

Pirates, munchkins and football; can you think of interactive ideas to make your lessons more creative? David Morley explains how themes like this can allow you to plan and take ownership of your curriculum, particularly with themed creative events

Early Years Update focuses on the importance of inclusion with babies, toddlers and three- to five-year-old children. This is part ofa range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

Early years practitioners have used ICT to support young children’s learning in diverse ways, writes Julie Steer

Jan White provides a range of practical ideas for creating enabling outdoor environments that support young children’s health, wellbeing, development and learning

Early Years Update focuses on development and learning as part of a range of practical ideas to underpin the information in the Early Years Foundation Stage Principles into Practice cards

Key stage 2 lesson plans for exploring the Beijing Olympics to meet learning objectives in geography and citizenship, particularly for gifed and talented pupils, provided by Caroline Coxon

Storyteller Taffy Thomas provides games and activities to stimulate children’s and younger people’s capacity to tell stories

Peter Leyland describes how he used TASC to teach his Year 6 class about measuring time read more