Sept. 1, 2022
Welcome back to a new academic year! Whether it’s inspiring your writers, extending your coders or boosting the creativity in your children, Purple Mash has everything you need to deliver a unique experience which is simple to use and loved by all.
Our open-ended tools allow children’s creativity to flourish. Using Purple Mash, the opportunities are endless. Children can role play being an astronaut, become a DJ, create animated stories, design multi-level games and much more. It is easy to reinforce core skills with a range of games that give children an engaging way to practice what they are learning.
From coding, to email and online safety, Purple Mash includes everything you need to deliver the computing curriculum all in one place. Teachers are fully supported with overviews, lesson plans, tutorial videos and slideshows, which all help deliver the computing curriculum confidently.
Purple Mash comes with free home access which makes it perfect to seamlessly integrate learning at school and home. Inbuilt blogging and Display Board tools are a great way to share all the learning with the wider school community and these can be set for the whole school, class or individual groups.
We are constantly adding new features to Purple Mash based on teachers' feedback and in the last academic year, we rolled out several new updates to support your teaching. Our most recent include:
2Publish: Purple Mash users can now edit and customise templates with improved functionality and layout which supports children when using ready-made templates.
2Write: Within our popular application 2Write, users can now use the same text/document formatting toolbar that appears in 2Publish.
2Challenge: 2Challenge was released in March 2022 and was designed to inspire children and get them thinking. It’s non-subject specific and can be used as a lesson starter, to introduce a new topic, to reinforce key learning and much more.
Dividers: In this exciting maths game, players embark on an interplanetary quest through three different worlds, each more treacherous than the last. Each world must be completed before the next can be explored, unless teachers set specific levels as a 2Do. Teachers can also reset children's progress.
You can download an overview of our most recent updates here.
Serial Mash is our online library of guided reading books and resources for ages 5-11. With a new chapter released every week of term, including fresh activities and additional resources, it has proved popular with teachers and children since it was launched way back in 2014.
Over the past year we have been hard at work on a major update to the entire package with the goal of making the online library the best it can be for teachers and children alike. We’re now delighted to finally announce that the new, improved version of Serial Mash will go live and be available to subscribers very soon.
There are too many improvements and additions to list here, so we’ve written a separate blog to do just that. Learn more about the new version of Serial Mash here.
We have a range of planning, tools and applications to enable your teachers to make the most of using Purple Mash in schools. Purple Mash is mapped to the curriculum showing how it can be used to support and enhance teaching and learning. All our curriculum maps are now interactive, so they allow teachers to find resources for the teaching of specific objectives, whether you are in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. These resources can then be set as a 2Do directly from the curriculum map. We have also mapped Purple Mash to the Oak Curriculum and National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE). Teachers can access the Purple Mash Computing Scheme of Work, Spelling Scheme of Work and Grammar Resources quickly and easily from our dedicated teacher’s area. Both our Computing Scheme of Work and Spelling Scheme of Work include slideshows to support the teaching by including questions, hints and tips for each weekly activity or unit. Within our Computing Scheme of Work slideshows, our education team have recently added interactive vocabulary lists that include vocabulary from the previous and current lesson(s).
We also have subject leader toolkits to help subject leaders make the most of Purple Mash within their subject, from action plans to surveys and draft policies, they include everything a subject leader needs to get started at the beginning of a new academic year. Foundation leaders can access their very own Foundation Leaders Toolkit which is designed to support you in achieving excellence whilst saving you precious time.
To support staff further, we have a variety of ways in which you can develop knowledge and confidence. Our training platform has 16 courses that can be completed at a time that suits you. These include courses covering assessment, EYFS and online safety to name a few, and they're all included within your subscription at no additional cost.
We also run regular webinars covering several themes, all of which are recorded so you can watch them at a time that suits you once registered. You can also book a Mash Chat which is a 30-minute, 1-1 call at a time that is convenient to you, where you can chat to a member of our CPD team about anything Purple Mash related. You can also book a CPD session which can be delivered on or off-site. These are delivered by our experienced educational consultants and are tailored to fit your needs.
We are constantly finding new ways to keep in contact with our amazing community. Our social media channels and private groups are a great way of staying connected and updated with latest news. On our Facebook group, you can ask for help and hear from our community directly. We also host teacher panels which includes peeks at upcoming releases, and this is your chance to give feedback and connect with other schools. Keep an eye on social media and the webinar page on our website to register for the next Teacher Panel.
You can sign up to receive our weekly Purple Mash newsletter that keeps you updated with resources and tools that can help you, alongside sharing competition news! Remember to bookmark our blog so you can quickly access it to see our latest news.
