Daily Archives: 28/04/2016

Languages

How to get Top Marks in Edexcel French IGCSE Writing Questions

The essay writing questions might seem daunting at first but this is one section of the paper where you, as the candidate, are in control. As long as you answer the questions and cover all the bullet points, you can decide what to write.

This is an easy way to score marks, and the writing sections of the paper count for 30 marks (10 for the shorter writing task and 20 for the longer writing task) which is 25% of the total marks. If you do well in this part of the paper it can make all the difference in being able to move up the grade boundaries.

This pack will explain what is required for the two writing questions for the Edexcel French IGCSE specification. Sample questions will be looked at, with tips for essay techniques, followed by sample essays, with examiners’ comments. Writing tasks from each of the topic areas will be looked at, for both the shorter and longer writing tasks.

The five topic areas are:

1. Home and Abroad
2. Education and Employment
3. House, home and daily routine
4. The modern world and the environment
5. Social activities, fitness and health

56 pages – Price £39.99 (excluding VAT)

Once purchased the CD can be freely copied and networked throughout the school.

To see sample pages please email info@classroom-resources.co.uk quoting the order code H9231

You can order the Edexcel French IGCSE – Essay Writing Skills CD-ROM in any of these ways: 

  • On our website
  • By phone on 0117 940 6409
  • By fax on 0117 940 6408
  • By email (quoting a school order number) to info@classroom-resources.co.uk
  • By post to: Classroom Resources, 9 Logan Road, Bristol, BS7 8DU

Classroom Resources Ltd
9 Logan Road,
Bristol,
BS7 8DU

www.classroom-resources.co.uk
info@classroom-resources.co.uk
Tel: 0117 940 6409

Travel

Student trips to Germany 2016 and 2017 – planning tools for teachers

Organizing students trips is among the most exciting and stressful activities in your school year.   The information in this newsletter about trips to Germany will help you to bring success to every step of the process – and make your next trip the most enjoyable and rewarding ever for you and your students!

In this Issue:

–       Creating student trip with the new module system by Go2City
–       Germany’s Rhineland – 4 of the best cities for student travel
–       Christmas Market 2016 special – DJH City Hostels in Bonn and Düsseldorf
–       Free overnight stays for teachers and chaperones

Creating the perfect Germany travel program  – the new module system by Go2City

You know how much work goes into building the best program for your group travel: Finding the right accommodations, then securing all activities and events – many phone calls and emails and weeks of work, or working with expensive tour operators.

New one-stop shopping for UK teachers – the catalog of options for affordable group travel to Germany’s Rhineland at go2city.travel

You’ll find all the information you need in one place:

  • Information about 4 of the best cities in Germany for student travel:  Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg
  • Top quality accommodations that comply with the highest UK standards for student groups – at low prices starting at Euro 24,90 per person per night including all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and all taxes!
  • Ideas and options for tours, activities, educational programs, day trips, and more.  We have hundreds of options for programs in all four cities and beyond. Find descriptions, prices, photos and videos and choose the best options for your program needs.
  • Booking online or with your dedicated Go2Citiy team.  Our online booking options include packages and individual modules.  Or call our team with your specific needs and we’ll create a customized program for you.

Organizing the perfect student trip to Germany has never been easier.

Complete list of all hostels in the DJH City-Hostel Group:

Bonn – DJH Hostel Bonn
Cologne – DJH City-Hostel Cologne Deutz
Cologne – DJH City-Hostel Cologne-Riehl
Duisburg – DJH Hostel Landschaftspark
Duisburg  – DJH Hostel Sportpark
Düsseldorf – DJH City-Hostel Düsseldorf

Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr Region – 4 Great Cities – 7 City Hostels – Hundreds of Options

Introducing four amazing city destinations in the Rhineland for your next trip:
Cologne – 2,000 years old yet young and vibrant
Bonn – the site of fascinating German post-war history
Düsseldorf – state capital known for world-class art and culture scene
Duisburg – amazing example of the beauty of German industrial culture.

We invite you and your group to explore and enjoy these cities and all they offer!

Introducing: Go2City, the travel and service agency of the youth hostels in Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Bonn

We hope to see you in Germany’s Rhineland in 2016, and please feel free to contact our office in NYC at any time with your questions and ideas. We’ll be happy to send you a personalized proposal for room reservations, programs, and all your city activities.

Christmas Market 2016 special – DJH City Hostels in Bonn and Düsseldorf

Now’s the time to secure the best spots for one of the most beautiful seasonal Germany experiences – a trip to the wonderful Christmas Markets.  Bonn and Düsseldorf are not only among the best cities in Germany for student travel, but they also have two of Germany’s most beautiful Christmas Markets — and our specials there make a trip during the holiday season this year even more affordable and easy.

Details (valid for bookings for stays between November 1 and December 24, 2016):

DJH City-Hostel Bonn Special

3 nights:  59.90 Euro per person per night in multi-bed room (regular price: Euro 83.90)!

Includes:

– 3 nights in multi-bed room
– All-you-can-eat breakfast buffet
– Admission and guided tour of famous Chocolate Museum in Cologne (tour in English)
– All taxes

DJH City-Hostel Düsseldorf Special

Overnight stay:   30.90 Euro per person per night in multi-bed room (regular price:  Euro 37.40)

Includes :

– 2 meals: all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and lunch or dinner
– All taxes

Free overnight stays for teachers and chaperones

Don’t forget: Teachers stay for free!

With any booking of 10 students or more, teachers stay for free during the stay.  That’s one single room per 10 students, plus breakfast (2 rooms for 20 students, etc.).

For more information about DJH, to request a customised proposal or to book your group reservations, please contact:

Rainer Perry

Marketing & Sales Manager North America UK & Ireland

DJH Go2City
934 8th Avenue 2b; New York, NY 10019; USA
phone: +1 646 207 6406
email: rainer@go2city.travel
www.go2city.travel
www.city-hostel.de

Check out our free online resources:
In-house agency Go2City
http://www.djh-rheinland.de/docs/city-hostels/ebooks/go2city_en/index.html

Languages

What is an effective strategy for ensuring progression in French throughout KS2?

For your pupils to make swift progress in French, it’s important that they are not only learning topic vocabulary, but also grammar. Better still, it is important that there is an effective strategy for combining both French vocabulary and French grammar to enable them to create their own sentences.

Which is why Brilliant Publications has developed Learn French with Luc et Sophie – a two-part series of engaging French storybooks suitable for children learning French at KS2.

Each series includes 14 units, 14 songs to reinforce vocabulary and 14 storybooks which feature a young brother (Luc) and sister (Sophie) and their friends and family. The stories provide an enjoyable, stress-free way to learn the rhythm of the language, intonation, and pronunciation.

The stories use simple sentence and language structures and offer the opportunity for your pupils to learn key vocabulary in context and to phrase things as a native speaker would.

Furthermore, the storybooks in each series are available both as mini 8-page books and as IWB files which enables them to be read individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. This makes it easy to present written and spoken language together so that children can see the links between them.

We have also devised a number of accompanying activities and games which will encourage your pupils to use the language naturally and without going through lengthy and complex thought processes.

The resource can be used by a teacher with limited knowledge of the language, made possible by translations of the text in the teacher’s book and audio files of all vocabulary and texts as well as the stories and songs. There are also self-assessment sheets so you can easily monitor progress and ensure full coverage of the Foreign Language Programmes of Study.

You can order Learn French with Luc et Sophie 1ère Partie for Years 3-4 and Learn French with Luc et Sophie 2ème Partie for Years 5-6 in a variety of ways, including:

  • By visiting the website
  • By phone on 01449 766629
  • By fax on 01449 768047
  • By email to orders@tradecounter.co.uk
  • Or by post to Brilliant Publications, Mendlesham Industrial Estate, Norwich Road, Mendlesham, Suffolk, IP14 5ND.

Brilliant Publications,
Mendlesham Industrial Estate,
Norwich Road,
Mendlesham,
Suffolk,
IP14 5ND.

website: www.brilliantpublications.co.uk
email: orders@tradecounter.co.uk

phone: 01449 766629
fax: 01449 768047

Building, furniture, maintenance, energy etc

Every noticeboard says two things to those who see it. The key task is to make sure that both messages are the same.

Imagine a noticeboard that contains up-to-date information on all the exciting, different, new, and indeed exhilarating things that are going on in your school.

On such a board there are two overall messages. One is the information that a certain event takes place on a particular day in a particular place.

The other is the sub-consciously sent message that this school is lively, engaging, and up-to-date.

But supposing the noticeboard itself looks a bit worn down and uncared for.  Suddenly all the overt information on the noticeboard is less appealing.  It is the sub-conscious message that now becomes the main focus.

It may be regrettable, but it is a fact of modern living that appearances mean a lot. That’s why we take the trouble to ensure that pupils and students attend in uniform, so that there is a sense of order and well-being within the school.

Noticeboards do have a key part to play in this; the modern, well-organised, engaging noticeboard announces that this is a school that puts things in order and make things happen.

In short, it proclaims what sort of school this is.

Greenbarnes Ltd is probably best known in the education sector as the supplier of high quality honours boards. We offer a range second to none, backed up by an efficient service so that you can update your noticeboards simply and economically.

We have a range of styles of outdoor noticeboards which you can see on our website.

Alternatively, please do call us on 01280 701093 and we’ll be pleased to discuss our boards, send you a brochure, and give any advice and guidance that you may require.

School News

Our mission to relieve the pressure from teachers that illness exerts

Theoretically, as a teacher you are more likely to be off work for illness than employees of most other professions due to the high number of children that you encounter on a daily basis.

Yet the DfE reports that teachers take an average of just 7.9 days off each year – similar to the average number of days taken by employees from across all sectors, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

It is thought that the presence of a culture of fear in schools often prevents teachers from taking the time off that they need when they are ill, but perhaps greater than this is the pressure that teachers put on themselves to get back to teaching before they’re ready.

With this in mind we’ve produced The Absent Resistant Materials Teacher Worksheet Series.

So if you are ill, at least you know that your students will always have work to do – which will hopefully relieve the pressure a little bit.

The worksheets within the volume cover a wide range of topics and range of ability – and are all designed so that they can be used as a one-off in an emergency, or as a series of highly varied tasks over a number of days, should the absence be unexpectedly protracted.

Activities range from a discussion on how to replace, reuse and recycle plastics to limit pollution, to comprehension questions on alloys.

Each topic area is followed by a wide range of questions, an extension task through which (for example) the students are required to explain how a shortage of chromium, nickel and zinc will affect our lifestyle, and a homework task in which the students have to create a poster explaining the difference between thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics.

The volume covers such topics as metal, plastic, wood, destruction of the forests, plastic pollution, safety in the workshop, etc. etc.

You can order The Absent Resistant Materials Teacher Worksheet Series online as a download for £10 by visiting http://www.absent-teacher.com/eworkbooks.html

If you quote HH10% into the message box when you make your purchase on PayPal, you will receive a 10% refund on your order.

ICT

How can schools create a manageable computing journey at Key Stage 2 when there are so many free tools to use?

In the run up to the launch of the new computing curriculum, as well as after it was phased in, there was a collective intake of breath from teachers up and down the country as they absorbed what it all meant.

For many teachers the notion of writing and debugging programs or explaining simple algorithms was well beyond their every-day experience and certainly not in their training.

Fortunately at the time there was already a string of free web based tools out there to use and a couple of these have proved really successful like Scratch from MIT & Daisy the Dinosaur.

Thankfully, it also seems sometimes that many children tend to be a little more fearless with technology – a strength when it comes to Computing!

With all the free tools that some school enthusiasts started to champion it soon became apparent that while they were free there was little if any support or influence on how products developed – how could there be if the tool was free?

The result for some schools has been a bird’s nest of logins for different tools, varying user interfaces, unreliable work saving and patchy levels of school service. Factors like these undermine teacher confidence who just want it to work. Schools love saving money but when the cost is not having a reliable learning environment then its surely too high.

The mission at Blippit has been to get key elements of the computing curriculum under one roof and to help develop curious learners through authentic learning – even to the point of publishing apps (with the teacher’s approval) on our free app store, Planet Blippit.

Blippit IO, through its powerfully simple tools, opens the door to computational thinking, logical reasoning and unexpectedly – writing.  You can use our templates or just create your own.

To try Blippit IO for your school just visit us here and if you decide that Blippit IO would serve your schools needs you can upgrade here.

If you have any questions or queries about Blippit IO please do call 01772 657 100 or email support@blippit.co.uk  John Bidder