The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players.

Don Coryell (ex-coach, San Diego Chargers)

What we think is based on three simple ideas:
1. Everything we do comes from experience (first-hand KS2 teaching and speech & language therapy experience).
2. Everything we do has the important ones - your students / children - at its heart. If a resource isn't going to hook them in, assist them or help learning to stick, we don't do it.
3. Everything we do, we do because we think it's right, not because we think it will sell.

Sparky Teaching believes teaching is about much more than ticking off lesson objectives and setting pupil targets... These clearly have their place, but so often creativity is planned out of lessons and in getting pupils to jump through the hoops we've made, something small but important has got a little lost along the way.

That something is best described by a spark. The spark that is achieved when we take the time to engage our pupils and provoke their interest. The spark that is so clear in every child when you catch them on their own, but gets swamped when they're sitting in a class of thirty. The spark when a pupil reports that she's been thinking about her latest topic at home... (without us asking!) It's the spark when a child realises that, with the right book, maybe this whole 'reading' lark isn't as dull as it seems... The spark when someone moans that their brain is hurting, we've made them think so hard... The spark generated by a classful of questioners...

We believe the most successful lessons are taught by creative teachers who have nutured this sort of positive learning environment in their classroom and have always been on the lookout for opportunities to inspire, to motivate, to stimulate and to interest... A series of great words and a great sentiment - but not so easy to put into practice when it's a wet Friday and your attempts to enthuse 6G with the wonders of learning are failing fast.

That's where we come in. At Sparky Teaching, we provide creative teaching ideas and resources to stimulate thinking skills, to enthuse and motivate your pupils. Because when they're interested... they succeed.

Some of our resources are for sale. Some are free. All have been designed to ignite creativity in your classroom.

When we say creativity, we aren't talking about putting Dad's old shirt on backwards and getting the paints out... We mean creative thinking and creative teaching. We think you can be just as creative in Maths as Art... Creativity isn't about doing things differently just for the sake of change, but equally it isn't about sticking rigidly to ways of working because we are 'expected' to do so. It is our hope that we will inspire you at least to question whether the way the education system has done things since the Victorian era is necessarily the best way to cater for the needs of our skills-hungry 21st century pupils.

Right, lecture over... We hope the above explains why we started doing what we do now. And if it's got you thinking, then that can only be a good thing. Soon your class will be too.

And the inspiration for our name? Take a look at the final page of Roald Dahl's 'Danny the Champion of the World'. It refers to sparky parents, but we've decided it should equally apply to what we aspire to be...