Learn how to get the best out of our new lesson planning and teaching resources
- Introduction
- Our new website
- Lesson planning and teaching resources
- Can I mix your old and new resources?
- The Oak learning cycles
- Our new interactive curriculum plans
- What we're working on next
Introduction
We've been working hard on making new and improved lesson planning and teaching resources which we started to release in autumn 2023. The resources are built around the latest evidence on how pupils learn, include SEND best practice, and are editable so you can tailor them to your pupils’ needs.
Designed by teachers, rigorously checked by experts, and tested in classrooms. All so you can feel confident in the resources you use.
Our new teaching resources are for English, maths, history and science key stages 1, 2, 3 & 4, and primary geography and secondary music.
A lot should still be familiar to you with resources following the same style of quizzes, worksheets, slide desks and lesson videos. But you will also see improvements as we bring you new features to make planning even easier, and an all-new website.
Our new website
Our new website helps you find both our existing and new resources more easily. You can get:
- Easier access to everything we offer: Download teaching resources and get the latest updates and helpful guidance, all in one place.
- Find what you need faster: Use our new search filters to save time looking for teaching resources.
- A bigger, better view of our resources: See what’s on offer more easily with larger previews of resources.
Make the switch now to start saving time searching for resources.
Lesson planning and teaching resources
New resources launched from 1st September 2023
You can find our new resources from our homepage. Our new units and lessons all have a 'new' label beside them.
We have new content available for English, maths, history, and science key stages 1, 2, 3 & 4, and primary geography and secondary music.
Resources we launched before September 2023
All our existing resources will be available until autumn 24, so you can continue to use them. From our homepage you can search these thousands of resources which have been designed to be easily adapted by you to use in your classroom.
You can search by keyword or topic or start exploring our subjects by picking a key stage to look through.
Can I mix your old and new resources?
Yes! This is totally fine to do. We are releasing our new content on a rolling basis across the year. You can start using them as soon as they're published, alongside our existing content.
By autumn 2024 all of our new resources will be available for English, maths, history, and science key stages 1, 2, 3 & 4, and primary geography and secondary music. At this point, but not before, we will retire our resources released in the pandemic in these subjects and phases. All of our resources in other subjects or phases will remain at least until summer 2025.
We'd love for you to use our new website to browse and download all of the teaching resources to help with your lesson planning, whether that is our resources released before September 2022 or our new teaching resources.
Send your feedback to help@thenational.academy. The more you do, the more we can learn about what we need to develop and improve next.
The Oak learning cycles
Oak’s slide decks are structured around learning cycles.
Learning cycles are parts of a lesson, with each cycle representing a section of learning focused on a theme or idea. There are usually between two and four learning cycles per lesson.
Each learning cycle is designed to guide pupils through several phases. The phases we use are explanation, checks for understanding, practice and feedback.
Throughout the slide deck, these phases are indicated by icons in the top right corner. A reminder of these icons are towards the beginning of every slide deck but if you are presenting, this slide will be skipped past automatically.
Read more in our help article What are learning cycle in our new resources?
Our new interactive curriculum plans
If you are accessing our new resources in English, maths, history, and science key stages 1, 2, 3 & 4, or primary geography and secondary music, you can use our interactive curriculum plans for even more help with your planning. Here you can:
- See an explainer of each curriculum, so you can understand the thinking, structure and focus behind the plan.
- View the full sequence, with breakdowns of prior knowledge needed for each unit and what comes next, all in one place.
- Search a thread within a plan so you can see common themes running through key stages in the subject.
What we're working on next
We've just announced our new curriculum partners for even more subjects and we'll work with them, our expert groups and hundreds of teachers to produce new curriculum plans and content.
From autumn 2024, we'll start rolling out brand new lesson planning and teaching resources for:
- Key stages 1, 2,3 & 4 Art & Design, Computing, Design & Technology, PE, RE
- Primary languages
- Primary RHE
- Primary music
- Secondary citizenship
- Secondary geography
- Secondary MFL
- Secondary RHSE.