Wiltshire & Swindon Learning Resources

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Supporting Teaching and Learning through Quality and Value

Visual Resources

1: Introduction and information

WSLR offers over 2,000 fascinating and varied collections of artefacts, models, and specimens, plus art reproductions and framed pictures, covering most areas of the primary curriculum.

The collections offer access to a range and diversity of resources that no individual school could ever hope to acquire for itself. They help support the exploration of learning topics more fully than is possible through print- or film-based media alone.

Many items provide distinctive cultural and aesthetic stimuli and can help develop thinking and reasoning skills and motivation for learning, as well as being particularly useful for visual and kinaesthetic learners. Some of the collections also make wonderful classroom displays, or subjects for artwork, and help enhance the school environment.

Artefacts - The artefact collections cover all national curriculum areas of history, cultural traditions, and the world's major religions. Each collection contains around ten original or replica artefacts that help children relate to life in other places, systems and times.

Models - Subjects covered include: castles of various eras; historic ships; the secrets of diverse buildings and structures, from a pyramid to a modern house; and scientific themes ranging from volcanoes and water cycles to power plants, space and technology, and from plants and animals to human biology.

Specimens - These make fascinating displays for learning, especially in our increasingly urban society. We can offer a wide range of beautiful birds, fish and animals, many in habitat settings, including most common British fauna as well as specimens from other countries. We also have collections of rocks, minerals and fossils.

Equipment - Scientific items, most of which are hands-on and cover, where practical, national curriculum areas of science including: electricity and magnetism; levers, mechanisms and forces; sound and light; weather; space, and materials.

Early Years - A variety of colourful collections including games, puppets, board books, quizzes and soft toys, with a 'learn and play' theme; for use with Early Years children and Foundation Stage groups.

Art Reproductions - Collections of 10-20 large laminated reproductions of works by famous artists, grouped by artist or by theme.

To view the full catalogue and select from our stock, go to WSLR Visual Resources. Each item is classified by one of the formats listed above and by curriculum subjects. Click on the catalogue number for further information - and in many cases (but we are still working on this) for photographs of the resources themselves.

The Visual Resources team is also responsible for WSLR's Framed Pictures collection; for further details and a link to the fully illustrated catalogue, click here.

If you cannot find what you are looking for, do please contact us; we always welcome suggestions for additional items that you would like to be able to borrow. We also welcome gifts of historical, scientific, cultural, natural history and other similar items in good condition, which might be suitable for inclusion in our collections for loaning to schools.

2: Advisory Services

Besides lending resources, the Visual Resources Team supports the learning environment in schools with advice and practical help.

By arrangement, one of our team can visit your school to demonstrate the use of resources or to talk about them and answer questions in the context of your lesson plan, and can help you locate related resources in other formats, eg books, audio-video and on-line. We can also help you make the best of your own resources, including guidance on maintenance and display.

A subscribing school may request one half-day visit a year, in lieu of a visit by the Books Team, at no extra charge. Additional time is chargeable, as is work undertaken for non-subscribing schools.

For further information please call the WSLR Visual Resources Team on 01225-713746.