There’s a wide variety of online courses and resources for teachers available right now, and many of them are free – to help us all keep going during the coronavirus outbreak – here’s a good round-up, by Anna Christodoulou, Make Happen Collaborative Outreach Officer
Non-subject resources for teachers
Embedding employability skills in the curriculum
TES has partnered with LifeSkills to create a new, free CPD course for secondary school teachers and leaders to raise the confidence, aspirations and motivations of young people on employability.
Anti-bullying training for the whole school
Anti-bullying alliance as part of their All Together programme for schools has developed a suite of free online training for anyone that works with children and young people. The programme was particularly developed to reduce levels of bullying of disabled children and those with special educational needs (SEN) but applies to all children.
Safeguarding and protecting children in the time of coronavirus
Educare are sharing free courses and resources to help teachers safeguard and protect children and young people at this difficult time. Their free modules include cyber security, risk assessment and H&S for children with SEND and ASN.
Cult of Pedagogy
This very popular podcast has been around for a while and has always been free. Its main topics are teaching strategies, classroom management, education reform and educational technology.
Listenwise: a library of audio resources
Listenwise is an online platform that supports remote learning with easy-to-use lessons and quizzes addressing current events and popular curriculum topics in English language arts, social studies, and science. Its basic plan has always been free, but they are now offering their premium plan for free for 90 days to support teachers and schools during the lock down.
Google Teacher Centre
Google is offering a series of courses for teachers to help them feel comfortable using Google tools in the classroom. Completing a set of courses leads to becoming a Google certified educator.
Khan Academy: free lessons and curriculum linked resources
Khan Academy offers free lessons in maths, science and humanities from kindergarten through to the early years of college. Students can use their exercises, quizzes, and instructional videos to learn and master skills.
Subject-specific resources for teachers
STEM
STEM Learning: supporting remote teaching
STEM Learning has published a coronavirus update to let schools know that they have created some free resources to help teachers deliver remote teaching. They have developed an area on the website to share good quality STEM teaching materials, curated and assessed by their team. They also have a large range of online CPD activities with their basic plan free.
Advancing Excellence in Chemistry teaching
To support teachers through this challenging time the Royal Society of Chemistry have made all online PD courses FREE until the end of August 2020. Their courses are designed to give an in-depth understanding of key concepts in teaching chemistry and topics include analytical chemistry, carbon chemistry, materials chemistry, energy and change, developing and using models, as well as broader topics such as maths skills and effective pedagogy.
Mr Barton Maths
Almost 10 years after it started, the aim of this website remains the same: to get everybody enjoying their maths a bit more. From lesson planning to past papers, this website offers an amazing range of free resources plus a very popular podcast on current topics about teaching maths.
Dr Frost Maths
Another fantastic resource, Dr Frost Maths provides an online learning platform, teaching resources, videos and a bank of exam questions, all for free, with the aim to empower students and teachers in mathematics. 6584 schools have logged on since Sept 2018 and its resources have been downloaded 7.08 million times!
Creating Physics sparks in the classroom
Spark from the Institute of Physics hosts online over 2,000 free physics teaching resources including classroom-ready material, teaching guidance, video content and student worksheets all tried and tested by teachers.
The Royal Society Schools’ network
This comprises enthusiastic practicing teachers, technicians and staff from schools and colleges across the UK involved in 5 – 18 years education. All those within the network will receive a regular email newsletter highlighting support, events and resources for those teaching science, mathematics and computing.
English, History and Social Sciences
Teach Shakespeare with Globe Theatre
Completely free to use, Teach Shakespeare lets you find, use and keep hundreds of Globe digital resources. Designed to make lesson planning easy and innovative, you can access the site from anywhere to build your schemes of work for 11 – 18 year olds.
Making History: using archives in the classroom
The National Archives shares their expertise in using archival material in the history classroom, offering practical examples for activities.
British Academy: read, watch and listen
The British Academy is the UK’s national body for the humanities and social sciences – the study of peoples, cultures and societies, past present and future. They have blogs, articles, publications, podcasts and videos available for free on their website, on a broad range of subjects, from identity politics to climate justice.
Teaching English with the British Council
The British Council is offering an extensive list of practical resources and professional development opportunities to support English teachers during the Covid-19 crisis. Articles, videos and publications are available in their webpage and a series of free online courses are offered in collaboration with Future Learn.
Arts
The National Gallery: Rembrandt late works for teachers
This teachers’ online resource is encouraging cross-curricular working and is aimed at art and science teachers delivering Key Stages 3 to 5 in secondary schools.
Teaching art with the Museum of Modern Art in New York
MoMA offers online courses designed for teachers and any other educators who want to learn about modern and contemporary art and develop their pedagogical skills. Their courses include Art & Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies for Your Classroom, Art & Activity: Interactive Strategies for Engaging with Art, and Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes.
National Theatre Collection
The new National Theatre Collection includes high quality recordings of world-class productions, from Shakespeare and Greek tragedy to contemporary literary adaptations. Following the schools’ closure due to coronavirus, the collection will now be available to pupils and teachers at state schools and state-funded further education colleges via remote access in partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing. During this temporary period schools will be able to share log-in details with pupils to access resources at home. Plus, starting on the 7th of April, much-loved National Theatre Live productions will be free to stream on YouTube for seven days.