Key Features: Overview

Espresso offers a range of content and tools that is simply unrivalled. It covers all year groups and subjects, plus whole-school initiatives such as SEAL and Heathy Schools. It also offers a multitude of resource types to suit all kinds of learning and teaching styles. Espresso even includes SATs-related resources.

Espresso specialises in taking educational concepts and applying a 'real-world' context through video and other multimedia elements. This encourages pupils to think beyond the simple fact, resulting in the deeper and wider learning of concepts.

Designed with both teachers and pupils in mind, Espresso is a resource that can be teacher-led or facilitate pupils working independently in a safe online environment.

• Watch our 'What makes Espresso different' video
• Download the Espresso brochure [PDF]

Key Features: Learning modules

Designed to address a specific learning outcome, each module starts with video clips and then leads into interactive challenges, pictures, worksheets, independent Learning paths and Learning reviews, to name just a few!

There are over 278 modules on Espresso covering subjects like Vikings, podcasting and story time. Each term we add even more modules to enrich different topics and curriculum themes.

Key Features: Topical news stories

Engage pupils in the world around them by bringing current events into the classroom.

Our weekly news service is differentiated for Foundation, KS1 and KS2, with age-appropriate stories, images and language. It includes our popular presenter-led News Bites, made in partnership with ITN, and differentiated news articles for three levels.

These specially selected news items provide an engaging starting point for pupil discussion and assemblies, and can be extended with further activities and quizzes. All news resouces are archived for future use.

Watch our news video to see what makes our weekly news service so unique.

Key Features: Cross-curricular approach

Espresso benefits all areas of the curriculum and school life. Our resources cover all the core subjects in addition to a rich supply of resources for the Foundation subjects.

Espresso also has some superb support for non-specialist teachers in hard-to-resource areas such as gymnastics and Modern Foreign Languages.

Teachers tell us that an important strength of Espresso is its ability to support cross-curricular topics and a creative curriculum. Our Resource boxes cover themes from pirates to 'going green', and cross-curricular links to other areas of the service are highlighted.

Key Features: Variety of resource types

Espresso has over 151 CD-ROMs worth of resources including: 7020 videos, 3460 photos, maps and graphics, 323 interactive Factfiles, plus SATs resources and double the number of activities than any other provider.

Pupils never get bored with Espresso as there's always something new. The variety of Espresso's creative resources keeps pupils engaged across the different sensory routes such as visual, auditory, kinaestheic, musical and intrapersonal. 

Research shows that the unique combination of resources on Espresso impacts strongly on three of the five critical aspects of learning: cognitive, megacognitive and social.

Key Features: Anywhere, anytime access

Both teachers and pupils have the option to access Espresso from home.

• Teacher Home Access
  As part of a subscription to Espresso, teachers are given the flexibility to plan where and when it best fits in with their lifestyle and priorities.
• Pupil Home Access
  An additional service that schools can add to their subscription, this feature provides parents and pupils with access to the full Espresso service from home as well as a Home learning area and Parents' guide. This add-on has been designed to strengthen school-to-home links, offering extended learning opportunities to Espresso users. Find out more.

Subscribing schools
Find out how you can add Teacher and/or Pupil Home Access to your subscription.

Parents and home educators
Espresso is not available for parents or home educators to purchase. Visit our benefits for parents page to find out how Espresso can support you.

Key Features: Planning tools

With thousands of resources to choose from, Espresso offers a number of planning tools that enable you to find the perfect resource to match your needs.

• Speed guides: quickly find relevant resources for your lessons by drilling down to search Espresso by resource type or by subject area
• Route creator: enables you to bookmark resources ahead of time, so you can concentrate on teaching and not having to navigate through resources during lesson
• Copy and paste: you can right-click on any photo, map or graphic, and then 'copy and paste' the selection into applications such as PowerPoint and Word, to incorporate into lesson plans and schemes of work
• Search engine: search by keyword, subject, key stage or resource type

Key Features: Learning platform integration

Espresso empowers teachers and pupils to get creative with digital media. Using our 'embed code', teachers can easily display and play video clips within learning platforms and VLEs.

Resources including video clips, photos, maps, graphic and text can also be exported out of Espresso and imported into other software packages such as Powerpoint, Moviemaker, Wordle and whiteboard tools.

For licensed subscribers, all Espresso content is copyright cleared for use in an educational context.

Key Features: Accessibility features

Espresso believes in making technology more inclusive and effective for all. Special features allow users to customise Espresso to support special education. For example you can simplify to help pupils focus on key information and change the colour scheme for those who require high-visibility contrast. Espresso also has an audio feature on most resources to support EAL pupils.

In 2008, Espresso Education was proud to be recognised with a BETT Special Award for Inclusion.

Key Features: Fun, engaging characters

Pupils love Sal, Kim, Polly, Ash, Eddy, Scrap and Scully, the cute 'Espresso Team' who help out around the service. These fun, lively characters have unique and quirky personalities of their own and even appear in their own range of Espresso books.

As well as participating in activities and dressing-up for our modules, the team also has their own module so you can get to know them. This features some fun animations and activities. We have also created some free fun stuff like face masks and posters for you to download.