OUR great new NIE educational resource has come full circle to support literacy and numeracy in the Rossendale classroom of a teacher who helped to write the material and has received a big thumbs up from pupils.

Over 150 attention grabbing ideas in our Pick and Mix activity pack, aimed at helping pupils and saving time for teachers, are the combined efforts of teacher Paul Hawthornthwaite, from Crawshawbooth County Primary School, working on a short placement with NIE co-ordinator Rita Shaw.

The resulting resource, designed to boost skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, maths and ICT for pupils in KS2 and KS3, is now available to any school within our circulation area and is ideal material for use in numeracy and literacy hours or to make links with homes.

"I'm really pleased with the way my ideas have been used," said Paul Hawthornthwaite.

"The sheets are eye catching and user friendly.

"And the newspaper articles featuring subjcts such as local sports, environmental issues, entertainments and useful local information, are a welcome change to pupils from the more usual school resources.

"I am particularly grateful to the Teacher Placement Service at East Lancs Education Business Partnerships for the opportunity to spend time on this project," he added. Any of the five different parts of the pack, each setting out around 30 assignments corresponding to items in our newspaper on a particular day of the week, can be delivered into school, along with the same number of copies of our newspaper.

And at only £10 for the minimum order of 25 on any one day, £1 for every extra five copies and a £5 discount on a week's delivery, this represents great value for money.

For more information on this or any other aspect of our NIE project, including tours of newspaper production and in-school workshops for participating schools; or for a no-obligation viewing of any of our educational resources in your own school, please contact NIE co-ordinator, Rita Shaw, tel 01254 678678 ext 255.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.