FOR SECONDARY 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 over 13 and for adults who wish to be a part of our site. Each week there will appear a "journal" telling the reader about our experiences in that country. It will be personal and hopefully an enjoyable read. Each country will also have a complete section with various topics looking at more academic aspects of life such as beliefs, clothing, looks etc as well as sections on the economy and demographics of the country. These will be updated too.

The journal 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 journal 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 academic updates will also contain photos and enhance some material that may appear on the site before we begin our visit.

Our suggestion is that you use the material as a basis for topic discussion within your class. 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 and also as an introduction to finding out more about their world.

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 miss" 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. These can be used as an output for the topic work and, as they will then appear on a global website, are highly motivational even to young pupils. Each year we will introduce two new themes. Having done these themes, pupils can be encouraged to read those submitted by other people all over the world. In time we will be designing themes that require you to link with another group of learners in a different country.

Pupils can also undertake the art. themes found in a separate section of the Your World Pages. They can use IT programs to do this and so integrate this into other subjects.

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 are a couple of other sections that provide learning material and these can also be used by learners. These can be found in the community part of our site.

We would hope that once pupils leave school they may still continue to use our resource in some form or other.