Dead Links, Peter Symonds College

At this time of year I usually go through all the links on the Skills for Life website, trying to find those addresses that have changed or no longer exist. I'm slower this year as a result of being off sick for ten days and working in a new office with less easy, temporarily I hope, access to IT. It's always a slow process as you cannot be sure that a great site has gone just because it is not there today - it may be just down today and back in business tomorrow. I've tried using an online verifier this year but it has introduced new difficulties.

One of the first problems I discovered was that those great learning resources from Peter Symonds College were now behind a password on their intranet. It has been sadly the case that the number of interactive resources has not increased much over the years, as sites are protected or go subscriber only. Luckily I searched around the college's main site and discovered the Peter Symonds resources here. I've tried to update all relevant links.

Word Sorting for Spelling

The activities linked from this page on the Houghton Mifflin site are a series of word sorting exercises to assist spelling. This one for example looks at different spellings for the "er" sound. The site is American, aimed at primary school grades and is very difficult to find what you are looking for. But these include exactly the sort of activities I've been looking for - sorting things into different categories. I'd like to be able to create them myself and have looked at ways of doing it. That seems to be to learn Flash, obtain the software and do it myself. That's a long process.

I'll try to find my way through this site and link some specific activities. At that point I'll find it useful.