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Subjects
Educational resources
Helicon is committed to creating extensive, top-quality educational resources. Our wide range of material for classroom use and home learning has been checked by, and created with input from, educational advisors and teachers.
Resources are available to match the UK and US school curricula.
The Hutchinson UK Curriculum Index
The Hutchinson UK Curriculum Index is designed to match the UK National Curriculum at Key Stages 3 and 4. The index:
- is created by individual subject teachers.
- is created using as a starting point the core text of the National Curriculum, the QCA Schemes of Work within the Curriculum, and the Key Phrase listings within the Curriculum.
- is structured in a way that mirrors the organization of the Curriculum and the Key Phrase listings.
- has been augmented during a major programme of content creation in each curriculum subject – the acid test for the Index itself.
In all, some 60 teachers and educational consultants have contributed to Helicon's latest UK educational Index and content creation project.
A key to the success of the Index is its focus on the knowledge you need for each subject, the terminology you need, and the appropriate language. Helicon's editors and authors have made determined efforts to ensure that we use the language of the classroom, and that we describe and structure the Index in terms that teachers and students will recognize and understand.
A huge range of material is mapped to the completed Index:
- over 6,300 articles, including one or two key articles for each topic.
- over 400 study topics, providing further detail about important areas.
- over 750 model answers to exam-style questions.
- supporting illustrations and photographs.
- quiz questions to test a student's knowledge of a topic.
- links to Web resources to find out more about each topic.
The Hutchinson US Curricular Knowledge Map
The challenge in creating the US Curricular Knowledge Map was that there is no single set of federally mandated curriculum requirements. Curriculum requirements and guidelines are different, and very differenly specified, for each of the 50 states. In addition, there are suggested (and sometimes competing) national standards.
The task for Helicon in developing a knowledge map that can be used as a common interface is to amalgamate these standards into one, inclusive, topic tree. This daunting task has been made manageable for Helicon by the skills we have developed in analysing the curriculum and exam syllabuses in the UK, and by understanding the needs of teachers and students.
The index has been developed by a team of teachers and educational specialists, working to national standards and over individual state curricular standards. State standards used include subject-specific standards from California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
The guiding principle in the development of the index is inclusiveness. For example, if Westward Expansion is studied in one state as part of the economics strand of Social Studies, and in another as part of US history, then Westward Expansion will be found in both locations in the knowledge map. The key to the success of the US Curricular Knowledge Map is that teachers and students will find relevant content where they expect to find it.
The Hutchinson Children's Encyclopedia
This encyclopedia is a reference title for 7–12-year-old children. Presented in an A–Z format, it is a rich resource, with crisp, clear text, specially commissioned children's illustrations, photographs, maps, charts, tables, and much more.
Each article places major emphasis on the elements of presentation that most captivate children: lively writing; detailed annotation; illustrations full of people and action; exciting tables, charts, diagrams, and maps; and hundreds of extraordinary, gruesome, amazing facts.
The product explores around 300 different topics. It is designed to supplement work at Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum and covers many of the core topics.
Each topic consists of a number of text sections with many other items linked to them – pictures, illustrations, maps, glossary items, date boxes, great lives, fascinating facts, and much more.
Other educational resources
Quiz questions – A special set of over 1,500 GCSE questions is available as a sub-set of our quiz database. Questions are written specifically by teachers and tagged by topic, and they are in appropriate language for students of GCSE level and age.
Web links – Each site in our set of GCSE-level Web links has been audited by teachers, and is tagged by GCSE topic, with a short description of the site.
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