This document was first written in a now obsolete hypertext format, to be published by David Cornforth's DEC_data. David made many helpful suggestions for improvement, but it was never published in the original format - the World Wide Web made other forms of hypertext redundant! So in 1997 I published it on my own website. After publication, Des Thomas made many helpful corrections and suggestions for improvement.
I am very grateful to both David and Des and also to my own Year 4 classes at St Barnabas' CE Primary School, Darwen who acted as guinea pigs. For the first few years that it was on my website, I did make minor changes. I moved it to my new website when I changed web hosts - but then I more or less forgot about it.
A couple of years ago some of the pages crept into the top 20 of my most visited pages. This coincided with talk of a more creative, joined up curriculum. The pages are still receiving proportionately more hits than they did a decade ago. So I decided that it was worth completely revamping the site. Nearly 2 decades on from when I first thought of the idea, internet speeds had reached levels never dreamed of - enabling the use of more/higher quality images. Also new forms of devices on which to view text had been invented: ebooks. So when rewriting I decided to make the full text and pictures available in Kindle format, with only the most popular pages available via the web.
I intended the text to be used by upper KS 1 and lower KS 2 pupils, hence the use of symbols. However, using online tools to assess readability, much of the text would be more suitable for upper KS 2 children (especially the sections on forces), though hopefully the symbols will also make it accessible to younger children.
Any comments, or suggestions are welcome. Please e-mail Graham Dean.