primaryresources.co.uk

What ever did I do before I found Primary Resources? Well, every time I moved year groups I ended up spending hours trawling through text books, file after file of worksheets, etc, etc, trying to find the exact activities I needed for my children to learn about x,y, or z that was on our curriculum that year. Quite often I ended up spending even longer creating my own, and this was before I could type well.

Gareth Pitchford's heaven-sent site is
- NGFL (National Grid for Learning) approved
- Packed to the brim with worksheets, NLS/NNS* resource sheets and lesson plan ideas
- Well-presented with easy navigation
- Worth a look for most core and foundation subject primary topics

I have found all kinds of treasures on this site. It is geared specifically at primary school teachers in the UK and, because the worksheets etc are contributed by the site owner (a teacher himself) and other teachers who upload activities they've produced, they fit perfectly the requirements of the topics covered in National Curriculum, QCA documents, National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. (*)
The majority of them are of a good to excellent standard and there are some ways of presenting things to the children that I never would have thought of on my own, lots of 'boring' things like verbs, adjectives, dictionary work, sums etc made creative.

FREE RESOURCES
Whatever subject you need a few more resources for, it's easy to find, as the navigation buttons run down the left side of every page and include all the subjects and links. Literacy and Numeracy are a little more complicated as, when you get into them, you have to choose an aspect of the subject eg Text/Word/Sentence in Literacy. These two sections in particular are well-stocked, and most things covered has a choice of sheets where it's possible to use two or three different ones to differentiate. There are worksheets on many, many things - this is just a taster!

ENGLISH :
spellings - suffixes & prefixes - phonics - homophones - dictionary work - nouns - adjectives - verbs and verb tenses - adverbs - syntax - grammar - subject/verb agreement - synonyms/antonyms

MATHS :
all 4 number operations - a range of problem solving activities - co-ordinates sheets - area and perimeter
- data interpretation - measures - fractions, decimals and percentages - time - mental maths/games

I have also discovered several useful worksheets in other subjects though I must admit, I use it mainly for English and Maths, perhaps because they are more academic subjects usually suited to written work at junior level, whereas foundation subjects I prefer to do in a more creative way than worksheets. The activities I have used, my children have enjoyed immensely, particularly the English ones - they really give a 'purpose' to doing practice exercises - the poem using exciting verbs and the noun, verb and adjective curse maker were popular favourites!
All of these were really easy to print or save.

BUT - most of the worksheet files are in PDF format and need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access them. It's free to get hold of acrobat reader though, and easy to search for on the net.

OTHER FEATURES
Some of the site's content is lesson plans, which are great for ideas and also come with the recommendation of a real live teacher, for whom it must have worked, so it inspires you with confidence to try something different once in a while. There is a links section where there are links to other resources sites, however after searching through them, none are quite as useful as this site, and also some of them are US-based sites which I suppose the odd activity can be found, but the curriculum and school system are really quite different, not to mention problems on worksheets with spelling discrepancies etc. There are also links to school sites, which can be nice to look at and be inspiring, and to government education sites for schemes of work and resources provided free for teachers. You can also contribute good worksheets or ideas of your own to the site, which I like - you can 'give back' a bit, and also share things you know worked well for you.

ONLINE LEARNING
A section of the site I have only just begun to explore is the ONLINE section and have already seen a couple of great things I will use when I come to cover certain topics over the year. For this section you require Flash, and it seems to be accessible only from the net, so only really useful if you're connected at school. The quality of the stuff here is outstanding - colourful, modern and lively, ideal for key stage 2 children. There are things like graphics, interactive books, maths games and activities which could capture the imagination of the most reluctant learner.

It's definitely worth having a look even if you're not into worksheets...you might only find one or two things or you might find the material for a whole topic. Particularly useful on moving into a new year group, new school or for NQTs, it will mean you're always well-resourced and without the hassle and clutter of countless files, in which your masters invariably get crumpled, yellow, ripped and crunched up. There's not a lot to criticise, it does seem however that while there are some key stage 1 (infant) activities here there seem to be a lot more for key stage 2, probably because they are more able to work independently from a sheet or on the PC. But that could change, people contribute new stuff all the time and it's worth revisiting again and again.

Happy exploring!