Being a teacher requires an enormous amount of organisational skill, especially when it comes to planning ahead with creating fun, educational and interactive lesson plans.
There are a number of resources out there that can really help with forming ideas for the classroom, such as creating games to develop learning skills, fun activities for a wide range of subjects and how to teach children with special needs in order to help their confidence and growth.
Here we look at some of the top websites for classroom resources ranging from early years to KS4.
The Teacher’s Pet website contains resources for Early Years, KS1 and KS2 and is full of useful information on a number of subjects including Maths and English.
With a handy Calendar section coming soon to help you to plan out all your lessons, whether for the next 12 months or simply the next day, this easy to navigate website features sections under the ‘Our Sites’ heading, including:
Classroom displays
Printed posters and games
Ideas for the classroom
A blog section for both news and updates.
The majority of these resources are completely free and there is the option to sign up to a 12-month subscription in order to access the growing collection of activities and games, which will usually cost you around £15 for the year.
An easy to navigate website, Free Teaching Resources points you in the direction of fantastic teaching ideas, lesson plans and worksheets that will help you to combine fun education into the classroom – all for free!
Many of the resources are provided by a number of organisations, including:
National Trust
NHS Careers
Maths Wrap
Action Aid
RSPCA
British Heart Foundation
This site features a clear subject tab on its homepage and is divided into sections including citizenship, art & design, drama, English, science, RE, music and enterprise and is primarily for KS1, KS2, KS3 and KS4.
It also consists of video clips and teacher reviews for additional help, as well as the latest news within the teaching world and teaching vacancies.
With a bold and colourful homepage, Sparkle Box contains free primary teaching resources and features 1000’s of products that you can browse, download and print.
Full of useful information that is incredibly easy to access, this website features a handy ‘Back To School’, ‘Themed Classroom Collections’, ‘Fairytale Resources’ and ‘Themed printable Cut-Out Lettering’ sections, as well as:
Class management advice to help teachers with routines and organisation, rules and behaviour and targets and monitoring.
A signs and labels section, which includes banners, labels and themed signs.
Topic ideas, such as faiths, festivals and celebrations, role-play, the world around us and creative arts.
There is also a handy segment on special needs, which covers dyslexia, communication and language, speech development, fine motor control and visual timetables and routines.
Math's Chase
Maths Chase is a completely free site where you can quickly test your mental arithmetic or times tables. The site is based on a very simple game but it can be a really fun way for kids to learn. Kids must move the little character along by answering arithmetic questions. When they get to the end, the screen shows the time taken, and how many correct/incorrect answers they gave. The game can be customised to include different numbers, and different types of maths questions, and whether the player's character is being chased.
Teaching Resources is a website that provides all the information you need on jobs, resources and news within the teaching community.
All resources have been supplied specifically for teachers, by teachers, which means that this site contains brilliant lesson plans, presentations, student activities and assessments.
Featuring a ‘Top resource picks’ section on the homepage (some of which are free) and a handy blog post link, there are headings across the page that have been divided clearly into sections including early years, primary, secondary and special needs.
As well as featuring the main topics, such as English, history and maths, the primary teaching page also has sections on aboriginal studies, design, engineering and technology, citizenship and personal, social and health education.
The useful ‘Special Needs’ section offers strategies, advice and ideas to support those with special educational needs and includes a blog and popular resources covering the following:
ADD / ASHD
Autism spectrum disorders
Down’s syndrome
Hearing impairment
Social skills
Speech and language
Visual impairment
Mental health
The UK Parliament website provides teaching resources and lesson plans on a wide range of subjects and for all key stages.
With an easy to use filter section, you can choose the key stage, subject, topic and resource type to get exactly what you need from this informative site.
The type of subjects includes citizenship, government & politics, history and law – even for lower key stages, with various resource types, such as assemblies, lesson plans, quizzes, worksheets and games.
As mentioned previously, the RSPCA is one of the organisations that contribute to the Free Teaching Resources website, however, their ‘Teachers’ section offers a much wider range of educational resources for early years, KS1, KS2, KS3 and KS4.
Helping teachers to introduce animal related topics to the classroom, as well as providing great ideas for fun and educational assemblies and school councils, there are a number of resources for:
Lesson plans, with more than 40 curriculum-linked lesson plans that will help to incorporate animal welfare into classroom time.
Quick activities ideas that you can download with full instructions.
Assembly ideas to teach students about animals and to encourage them to develop responsible attitudes towards their care and welfare.
School Councils, with information regarding animal welfare and what your school can do to help out, such as making school food and activities more animal-friendly.
This website was strictly set up to support supply teachers. The Supply Teacher has news, views, information and inspiration added regularly. The owner of The Supply Teacher also keeps up to date on social media and there is always something new and fresh for supply teachers to use and learn from.
This site contains:
a forum free hosted on Facebook for you to join and take full advantage of
a latest news section
Useful links
Information on National Supply Teacher Week
Useful resources
Information on Umbrella Companies
A whole section on Continuous Professional Development
The best part about this website is that it was written, and is owned, by an ex-supply teacher who understands the ins and outs of working in a school on supply. She has been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. This Facebook group has over 3,500 teachers all eager and willing to share ideas and stories.
On here you can find advice on:
getting started as a supply teacher
making a good impression at the school
working with education recruitment agencies
‘emergency lesson plans’
The website aims to provide supply teachers with all the information, resources and support they need to be a successful supply teacher. It ensures the job is as satisfying as possible for the supply teacher, the pupils, and their schools.
The TES (Times Education Supplement)
This website has by far the largest reputation in the world of education when it comes to useful resources, tips and advice on teaching. If you need an emergency lesson plan, or even if you’re doing your research and planning for a lesson well in advance, this is the place to go. You can subscribe to the website and get lots of useful teaching tools for completely free. The resource centre is very user-friendly and allows you to select the criteria you’re looking for very quickly and smoothly. Whether you’re a primary teacher, secondary teacher or nursery teacher; or if you specialise in a core subject or humanity subject, fear not. There’ll be a tailored fact sheet or lesson plan for you.
Supply teachers tend to really like this site because of its differentiated material. Here you can access a number of free resources. From English topics, Mathematics topics and Science topics, to early morning work, this site has a variety of tools to help you succeed in the classroom. We’d recommend signing up to their news feed to take full advantage of their wonderful material.
Hamilton Trust
This online resource is fabulous for those needing full plans for whole year groups. Supply teachers can currently sign up as a 'friend' for £28.00. There are structured lesson plans for across the entire curriculum.
Supply teachers can use this site to access notes on the new curriculum and use Hamilton’s English, Maths, Science and Topics materials. English support documents include Hamilton’s structured grammar scheme and advice about planning within the new curriculum. Maths support includes a draft calculation policy in line with the new curriculum, and strategies for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There’s also an online training link that takes you off to videos of some of Professor Ruth Merttens’ most popular training sessions which are most certainly worth a watch.
This certainly is a friendly site and has heaps of resources for all types of teachers, not just supply teachers. You can download storyboard templates, board games, quizzes, loop cards, activity sheets, worksheets, presentations, challenges, display posters, creative activities, resource packs, information sheets, assessment packs, observations sheets, hand over templates, lesson plans, certificates, name labels, monitor badges, wall display packs, audit plan sheets and much, much more.
Supply teachers can join for free to access the material at their fingertips.
Why Orange Genie Education?
We employ and pay thousands of supply teachers and education support staff every year. Our employment portfolio stretches over 10 years in the umbrella industry making Orange Genie Education one of the most trusted umbrella brands. With this in mind, there’s no wonder we have long lasting relationships with hundreds of recruitment agencies all over the UK. Upon joining Orange Genie Education you become an employee of ours benefiting from:
Single employer for all assignments
One payment for all different agency assignments completed in a week
Simplified and efficient taxation from single tax code
Guaranteed pay for the work completed
Continuous employment rights
Maternity and Paternity pay
Sick pay
Access to a workplace pension
Statutory rights
Improved personal credit references and rating
Extraordinary employee benefits including 24/7 access to a GP, councelling, support, fitness resouces, and discounts & offers worth hundreds of pounds in day to day savings
Our aspiration is to improve the lives and wellbeing of supply teachers and education support staff.