Are you a primary school teacher who uses sparklebox? Help pls?

thegirlintheattic

sneezyboots wrote: »

Whether you agree with the morals of using the site or not that is a ridiculous thing to say. There are no other sites out there even similar in quality and quantity that are free and I would like to see you make the things on there in 10 mins.
Plus I have never met a teacher with a spare 10 mins!

I make all my own resources, as do most of my colleagues, that is what you have PPA time for. I'm not talking about quantity but the vast majority of resources on Sparklebox could be made easily and quickly (and also be tailored to your class) using word and images off google. I did not say you could make ALL the resources off Sparklebox in one 10 min session but for the individual resources 10 mins would be plenty.

sneezyboots

If you manage to do all of your preparation, assessment and all the other jazz that comes with teaching in half a day that you are either a better person than 99.9% of the rest of the teachers in the country or you clearly aren't actually doing it properly!

maire1

Just putting the moral aspect to one side, I think sparkle box resources can be seriously over used and I've been in a lot of classrooms where everything was printed from there. It can make some teachers lazy and over dependant on its displays etc.

My local authority has blocked the site though my school allows us to print out things at home. On the whole, staff choose not to use it for moral reasons.

The list of 200 words comes from the Leyters and Sounds phonics guidance. This list contains some 'tricky words' which can't be sounded out therefore this list won't help with the new year one phonic screen.

If you google letters and sounds, you'll find the document with the word list appendices. You will find this useful.

dizziblonde

I think a lot of the stuff still in circulation is stuff that was printed off and laminated before it all came to light - and with budgets being what they are - lots of schools seem to be taking the "use it till it falls apart but no new stuff" line on things (can't say I blame that logic since colour printing and laminating costs a bomb in both resources and man-hours in cutting it all out - unless you have a lean, mean, laminating machine parent helper like my old school did... or a very strange class for whom the supreme behaviour reward was to be allowed to sit and laminate stuff - under my supervision - on a breaktime!).

I never used it much anyway - but I was a saddo who liked making my own stuff from scratch on the PC... hated taking books home to mark (I did all that before I left school on an evening) but I'd faff on on the PC making resources all evening quite happily. I'm much more PC literate than lots though.

bylromarha

sneezyboots wrote: »

There are no other sites out there even similar in quality and quantity that are free and I would like to see you make the things on there in 10 mins.
Plus I have never met a teacher with a spare 10 mins!

http://www.twinkl.co.uk/
http://mrspancake.com/

maire1 wrote: »

Just putting the moral aspect to one side, I think sparkle box resources can be seriously over used and I've been in a lot of classrooms where everything was printed from there. It can make some teachers lazy and over dependant on its displays etc.

I agree with this. I returned to full time teaching in Sept 2011 after a 7 year mat leave, and can't believe how much stuff is repeated in class after class as it's all from twinkl.

Used to make all this sort of stuff myself AND with no PPA time!

But I'm getting sucked in now...why reinvent the wheel when a pretty good one exists already?

sneezyboots

bylromarha wrote: »

http://www.twinkl.co.uk/
http://mrspancake.com/

Nowhere near the quantity and certainly not much for KS2. There are lots of little sites like this, granted, and I usually have them all open and check between them when I need stuff. It is just a shame they don't all merge so everything is in one place.

Teerah

What age is the 200 word list aimed at?

thegirlintheattic

sneezyboots wrote: »

If you manage to do all of your preparation, assessment and all the other jazz that comes with teaching in half a day that you are either a better person than 99.9% of the rest of the teachers in the country or you clearly aren't actually doing it properly!

I don't appreciate you calling my professionalism into question - 4 hours is more than adequate to plan for a week's worth of lessons, doing them properly I might add, not just downloading an old lesson plan from a website. Marking, phone calls etc. than take a few hours after school each day. If you are IT literate, have good time management skills and plan ahead then you can get all the work done PROPERLY during PPA and a few hours after school each day.

Anyway this has diluted my point somewhat. My point was originally that I find it extremely sad that so many children today are taught with downloaded resources, often not adapted or differentiated at all. The amount of times I've seen teachers shun using local examples of something because "I've got this stuff from ....." instead of making their own resources or, even worse, handing something over full of mistakes, either in subject matter or spelling, because they haven't even bothered to check what they've downloaded. Not all teachers do this, and I'm sure you don't, but unfortunately a significant proportion do.

dizziblonde

I used to manage to get the bulk of my week's planning done in one PPA afternoon - would sit in the staffroom with headphones on to prevent idle interruptions and just absolutely work like the clappers at it.

Granted we had a collaborative system going whereby one of the year team planned literacy and one planned numeracy - but still.

Of course then it was another 3 1/2 hour endeavour getting the evil school printer of doom to print the blasted stuff OUT!

PJS1984

Reading this forum has cheered me up a bit - it's nice to know that some people are still taking a principled stand and are not using sparklebox. Unfortunately so many others are either unaware of the history behind the site or are choosing to turn a blind eye.