FOR PRIMARY TEACHERS

As we said on the previous page, this section is not prescriptive; it is not a set of instructions on how to use our resource. It is intended as a statement of what things will be appearing and a couple of ideas as to how you can use them.

This section is intended for people who are working with children between 8 and 12 years of age.but of course it can be used by more advanced young er pupils or older, slower learners.

Each week, appearing in the bigger blog part of the Schools section, there will be an update about the country that we are presently in. This update will be a section of text and up to 12 relevant photos. It will aim to show some aspect of life peculiar to that country, that we have come across in the previous week. The update will fit within the social studies area of most curricula around the world but being most closely based on that of New Zealand, our home base.

The material can be used in many ways either as group discussion, topic, material or as a starter for some individual work to be done by pupils.. Obviously, and perhaps the only downside of the whole resource, we cannot tell you in advance what will appear. By going to the route page you can check out which country we will be heading to next. However the update will appear each Monday morning and so, if your class has computer access later in the week, you will have a little time to see the material and plan ahead. The material is very useful in literacy work as well as the social studies area.

If all your class have access to computers at least once a week then you can load the appropriate page and pupils can read through the material and you can follow this with a discussion or written work relevant to the text. Our only suggestion is to perhaps make use of it early in the week thereby removing the possibility of pupils with access at home announcing, "we've already read this" and slightly disrupting your plans.

If you have just one computer available then you can single out a different pupil each week to read the text and maybe describe the photos, a very useful lesson in communication as well as literacy. Discussion or written work can follow this as described above.

If you do not have internet access in the class then you can still use the material by printing the relevant text and photos, probably best to use the enlarged ones obtained by clicking the small image, and then handing these out to each pupil (as in 1) or to a selected pupil (as in 2)

There are of course other ways in which the material can be used but we leave that up to you. We would however love to have your ideas through the teachers forum part of our site.

We have also designed some "themes" for this age group, so that the pupils can actually contribute learning material to the site based upon thier own lives and where they live.. We have found in our trials that these are highly motivational. Suddenly the pu0ils realise that there work will be sued by others as learning material and it immediately gains in both importance and relevance.

The themes are divided into basic and complex; the main difference being in the time take to complete them and, to a degree, the number of people involved. Most baisc themes will be done by indivuals although there can be ghroup discussion beforehand. They can also be completed in a shorter time. Complex themes are best done as group work and sprad over as much as one complete school year. Each year we will introduce two new themes in each category.. Having done these themes, pupils can be encouraged to read those submitted by other people all over the world.

You can also make use of the material contained within the country pages for each country we visit. Whilst this is mainly intended for older pupls it can, with minimal guidance, be used by this age group too.

Pupils can also undertake the art themes found in a separate section of the Your World Pages.

For those schools who have subscribed to one of the paid sections of the website (i.e. putting on information about their school within our global schools section or wishing to place your own social studies enquiries on our site) a small set of teachers notes will accompany each update. Others can subscribe separately to this by clicking here. This does not apply to partner or network schools who will receive the notes free.

There is also a section that will allow you to find a partner school with whom you can work.

The beauty of this resource is that it grows with the pupils and when they advance on to senior school they can take this familiar learning resource with them but at their new level of learning.