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Once again, across the country, teachers have been tested in new and unpredictable ways throughout 2022. The cost of living crisis has affected whole communities and the weight of responsibility weighs ever heavier on the shoulders of school communities who constantly go the extra mile to support parents and children. With teachers leaving the profession and budgets being squeezed, we'll be looking at the resources which we think have helped in big and small ways over the last 12 months.
Over the last few years, we've been highlighting our favourite 20 resources. Check out our previous lists from 2019, 2020 and 2021. Now it's time to reveal our top 20 of 2022 in no particular order. Some are free, some aren't but we're not being paid to promote any of them. Everyone who works at Manic Street Teachers are teachers themselves, so it's what we've used and liked the most this year!
Explore current theory, research and debates around supporting children’s reading engagement in this free online course, Developing Reading for Pleasure: Engaging Young Readers. Aimed at teachers, teaching assistants, school leaders, reading volunteers, parents and all those interested in nurturing children’s reading, participants will gain knowledge and strategies to help promote reading for pleasure across schools, homes and communities. You even get a digital badge at the end of it!
Twitter teacher @Misterbodd has created monthly digital newsletters showcasing the best of new children's book releases in a child-friendly format, which can easily be shared with your school community. Each newsletter ranges in themes and focuses, with recent months also containing author Q&As from the likes of Elle McNicoll and Simon Fox.
This is a fascinating website created by the national Library of Scotland and contains overlay maps for the whole of the U.K. It is an amazing map for both geography and history. Easily zoom in on a locality and then switch between historical maps, satellite images and 3D views to explore the changes over time.
A one-stop shop to download some incredibly useful pedagogy wrapped up in a single page. It includes five ways to scaffold classroom dialogue, check for understanding, do daily review, build fluency, sustain student attention, enrich learning, build confidence, weave reading into the curriculum, secure progress through modelling and foster student agency.
5. Bookmark Charity
7.1 million adults in England struggle to read and face challenges like these every day – at home, on the move, in the workplace, and with their friends and families. Bookmark Charity, established in 2018, aim to stop this trend, wanting every child to read. They offer volunteer-led reading programmes and 'Story Corner' reading for pleasure packages around the country. Keep an eye out for when your city crops up and get on it!
A great peice of tech for those with ipads or laptops in school is Flash Academy which aims to support your EAL learners through a unique programme. They also offer free worksheets and grammar videos but this has been a lifeline for many teachers who may have had children with no English enter their classes this year. The site accommodates for over 48 languages, including Ukrainian, and is already an award-winning, well-established company.
It just wouldn't do if Manic Street Teachers didn't sneak their way into our list of top 20 resources! Over the last few months, we've added more and more to our Slow Writing page, including prompts for Years 3-6. This includes Story Starters, Vocab Corner, Success Criteria and a HD images to help get spark children's imaginations. It's a perfect short writing task to promote critical thinking, editing and publishing in a short timeframe.
This is a superb podcast now on its 68th episode. It aims to chat to inspiring primary teachers on Twitter who are able to share their wisdom in selected areas of the curriculum, share funny stories of their time in the primary profession and discuss their top three resources. Well worth a listen to get new ideas and inspiration for the classroom.
Probably one of the most succinct and valuable books about teaching reading that has been produced thus far. Although other books may offer more child-friendly and practical activities to support reading, this book hones in on the research, the evidence and the reasons for choosing wisely in how we teach reading. A must for everyone in the profession. @Suchmo83 even gave all the profits from his book to the Malaria Consortium. What a guy!
10. Padlet
Okay, so this app is 10 years old, but teachers a brilliant at finding tech and using them in different ways in the classroom. From showcasing videos or work, to using them as new reading logs or sharing awesome novels, Padlet is becoming an evermore useful tool for teachers these days. We love it!
When Ofsted send new frameworks, updates and recent reviews out, it's usually at the end of term, in the holidays or in the middle of the night! Thank goodness then for Marc Hayes and his simplified infographics that have been utilised by subject leaders up and down the country to help.
12. Times Tables Ninja
Vocabulary Ninja continues to produce some of the most useful resources around and this time his Times Tables Ninja book with Sarah Farrell helps children go beyond just rote learning to a masterful understanding too.
Purposeful classroom talk, or oracy, is increasingly recognised as fundamental for supporting both personal and academic development and for enhancing genuine participation in learning. Based on classroom observations and interviews, this book offers an analysis of schools’ responses to improving the quality of both learning to talk and talking to learn. Also, Rupert is one of the nicest guys in education. One to buy!
Another really practical book on our list is this one by Kate Jones. It features the pedagogy and research behind retrieval practice but also offers insights into how this is being applied in practical ways across the country with lots of insightful examples and ideas to apply straight away.
15. Mathsbot
Remember the old ITPs from long ago? Okay, well we do. Here are a huge range of really useful tools that can turn the concrete into the pictoral at the click of a button. Incredibly useful manipulatives along with self-marking arithmetic papers and a range of awesome puzzles. If you didn't know about this one, you'll never look back!
A lot of talk this year has been a round spelling patterns and whether they are fit for purpose in the Key Stage 2 curriculum. Jason Wade has been doing things differently for years. Take a look.
A great new hastag for teachers on Twitter to share their own resources or things they've found really useful. Anyone and everyone is welcome on a Sunday to take something or offer something to a wonderful community of like-minded professionals.
18. Digimaps
Again, not especially new, but useful every year. If your school hasn't invested, then get the geography lead to see what they offer. Digimap for Schools is an award-winning online mapping service supporting cross-curricular teaching of geography, math, literacy, and history - enabling teachers and pupils to gain critical digital and data skills.
Grammarsaurus have been producing incredibly useful model texts and will even do them on request. I've used the Avatar descriptions and blogs in my own teaching. They are annotated, year group specific and well-written.
A series of Dogsthorpe Infant School podcasts for children, parents, teachers and schools. Dogsthorpe Infant School is an academy converter and part of Hampton Academies Trust. The Headteacher is Mrs. Becky Waters. ‘Eddie’ is her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. A complete melting pot and a great listen.
We'll be keeping tabs on the resources we use or are inspired by during our own practice in the upcoming year and will be sure to write another blog in December 2023!
Until then, thanks for reading.
Matt :)