As a qualified teacher I know only too well the preparation and time that goes into school assemblies. Assemblies can be an incredibly important opportunity to keep children engaged and up to date with ‘real world’ issues. I was therefore excited to hear of Picture News– a subscription service that provides schools with everything they need for assemblies based on current news stories.

We were sent a sample week’s set of resources to review. The resources come inside a cardboard tube delivered each week to your school.

During the week we reviewed our tube, the current news story was the fire at Notre Dame in Paris. Consequently, inside our tube was a photograph (printed as an A2 Poster) of Notre Dame in flames, with the question “Is it always better to rebuild than to start again?”.

Accompanying the poster were a whole host of other useful resources. There was an brief outline of the news story to support teachers to correctly explain it to children with supporting questions, reflections, links to useful videos, and key vocabulary. There were also specific focus cards for KS1 and KS2 and resources on British Values, linked to the news story. In addition, the tube contained a weekly newsletter with other news stories, in the style of a newspaper.

What did we like about it?

• Sparks Children’s Interest in the World We Live in– In my opinion, Picture News is a brilliant, accessible and child-friendly way of encouraging children to show an interest in current affairs. It’s clear they put a lot of effort into selecting news stories, pitching it at the right level and differentiating the questions for different key stages to ensure it engages children. And I believe their efforts have definitely paid off.

• Saves Time– I loved that this subscription service aims to help reduce the workload for teachers. Assemblies are important but with an ever increasing work load on teachers, it can be difficult to find the time to plan them. This helps solve this problem.

• High Quality– We found the resources to be of a high standard. Knowing that Picture News has been created by qualified teachers provides confidence that you can rely on their resources for assemblies. The questions, reflections and news stories are all well researched and structured.

Find out more on Picture News’ website here.

Please note this blog post we received a sample product for review and this post is sponsored. All words and opinions are our own.