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Quotations website that can help you find the right words for your articles or simply for inspiration. The website is organized by authors and topics.

We all get overloaded from time to time, especially toward the end of a term when your todo list turns from being measured by points to metres. We all have our own capacity to deal with the issues at hand, and the ideas behind Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) attempt to maximise our bandwidth while streamlining the signals. The origins of the theory go back to the 1980s when a plethora of digital innovations changed how presentations were done in the business world. This trickled down in the following decades into how teachers presented ideas, moving away from blackboard and Over-Head Projectors to digitalised PowerPoint presentations. As with any new innovation, form overcame function, and for a period in the early noughties, I swear it must have been the law to cram as many animations and sound effects into every PowerPoint, and reading every word from the screen aloud was mandatory.

"Building a rich vocabulary, across the curriculum, is one of the main aims for most teachers. Not only does a rich vocabulary help to create strong writing skills, but also can help with improving access to all areas of the curriculum. In his book, Andrew Jennings explains why vocabulary should be a focus in your classroom, providing resources and inspiration to help optimise vocabulary learning. Resources include a focus on SPaG facts, key vocab words that support various popular primary topics, an etymology section to inspire pupils, and looking at various grammatical features that can help build a repertoire of rich vocabulary. Throughout, the book provides other resources that can be copied for classroom use, or be used to take home to help build vocabulary skills away from the school setting."

"With a greater focus on accessibility and inclusivity, Microsoft has announced ten major updates to their services available in 2019, that can have a positive impact on using their tools for teaching and learning. In a blog post, Mike Tholsfen highlighted how the Immersive Reader technology, along with Line Focus in Microsoft Word, and an even more impressive feature of being able to change page colours in Word desktop."

"For fun, the writer and children's book illustrator has created a series of images that can help young writers broaden their language and writing, encouraging young authors to "Fill your stories with a rainbow of images" - A great resource for the primary/elementary classroom and beyond…"

"A useful site for creating metro maps. Use it in creating writing to map out a character's travels, make Monopoly-like games or make classroom posters showing connected words, names, ideas or topics."

"This is a fab HTML5 language learning site which tests your language skills through a series of games with 1500 words. The site collects stats on your performance. The current 21 languages include English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japan, Italian, Russian, Polish and many more."

"Enter a noun into this website and get a range of words to help you describe it. Superb for creative or descriptive writing projects."

"A lot of schools have jumped on buzz words such as metacognition, mindfulness, mindset etc. There is obviously great merit in all these strategies, however as Carol Dweck has emphasised, in a lot of cases these methods are not always understood by school leaders leading to them not being integrated effectively and sustained. These theories are not fads but in many schools, they don't give these methods the planning, time and evaluation that is required for success of any strategies that will benefit learning. Schools are looking for a quick fix and so latch on to 'new, exciting and popular theories'."

"Young children literally see words and faces differently from adults. Where adults can most easily comprehend a word when they look at it straight on, children need to look a bit up and to the left. For faces, they need to look a bit up and to the right. What's more, those differences are accompanied by previously undetected changes in the brain circuits responsible for processing words and faces, researchers report Feb. 23 in Nature Communications."

"A great set of algebra puzzles, including visual, word and draggable puzzles."

"You are more likely to remember something if you read it out loud, a study from the University of Waterloo has found. A recent Waterloo study found that speaking text aloud helps to get words into long-term memory. Dubbed the "production effect," the study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself that has the most beneficial impact on memory."

"A 'Guess Who' game template to customise digitally, or print the blank template for pupils to design their own. Get students thinking about chemical elements, rivers of the world, types of words, or anything else!"

"I love patterns, diagrams and pictures. Ask me to record information and it gets plastered over a page in bubbles, a mind map or random boxes. I'm not particularly artistic but I find I like to store information in this way. Even with telephone numbers - I remember the pattern the digits make, not the number itself."

"Storytime: While reading to children has many benefits, simply speaking the words aloud may not be enough to improve cognitive development in preschoolers. A new international study, published in the journal PLOS ONE and led by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, shows that engaging with children while reading books to them gives their brain a cognitive "boost.""

"I was introduced to the Good/Great/Awesome techniques in some TEEP training in November last year. I immediately placed it in my "to-do right away" pile. As an intrinsically positive person, and teacher, who always strives to build students' self esteem and promote the growth mindset in all who pass through my classroom; I found the idea of offering 3 levels of positivity much more appealing that the previous wording. I implemented this strategy quickly and personally added in an overarching learning objective, so students could see each stage of G/G/F as building blocks. I coloured coded them, as is common, and occasionally colour coordinate to grades or tasks."

Fun Chrome experiment where users listen to a word and then type or say to input the letters. Three difficulty levels available.

"A strategy to support pupils improve their spelling strategies, by circling words which they think require attention. The Standards & Testing Agency have in some ways made the marking of spellings more problematic than it's ever been. They state quite clearly, that individual spellings should no longer be pointed out to children if you wish to mark it as an independent piece. This, coupled with Ofsted's move away from heavy amounts of marking needing to be seen in books, could make the marking of spelling seem tricky."