National Poetry Day

Although suitable for any time of year, you can explore this site for ideas to celebrate National Poetry Day with poetry in school. It features Toolkit for Schools and downloadable teaching resources.

Shakespeare Schools Foundation

SSF is a biennial festival open to every secondary school, working with 11-16 year olds and their teachers throughout the UK. This unique arts-education initiative enables young people to perform Shakespeare's most famous plays in their local theatres.

Visuwords

A graphical dictionary and thesaurus which is a great teaching aid on an interactive whiteboard if you are encouraging children to think of alternative words in their creative writing.

Basic Skills Literacy Starters

A selection of PowerPoint presentations designed as lesson starters on basic skills. There are accompanying worksheets and teacher notes. The level is mainly Year 7 (age 11-12).

Word Central

Try the Mirriam-Webster Word Central site which has a dictionary and thesaurus. You can also find rhyming words which could help you with your poetry.

Playing Shakespeare from the Globe Education

Globe Education offers a collection of free online resources, aimed to support the study of Shakespeare in schools mainly at KS3 but resources could be used at different levels. Free Globe tickets for London schools too!

Punctuation Overview

A useful guide in the correct use of full stops, commas and semi-colons.

CBBC Newsround

CBBC presents the latest news for children. Stories include sport, showbiz, world events, quizzes or games. There are also news-based lesson plans to help teachers use news in the classroom.

Teaching English

Free classroom materials including short activities to full lesson plans, for teaching kids and adults. There are also articles on teaching English, and free teacher development and teacher training materials.

Drama Toolkit

A one stop shop for drama that aims to take out the frustration of coming up with original drama lessons, session plans and schemes of work