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Reviews

For teachers

Local hero

Terry Park is a long-in-the- tooth comprehensive school teacher and ‘commonsense man’. We all know him, he cares about the kids, likes a drink, is sick of local authority politics and hates Ofsted; he’s union-minded and a member of Teachers For Radical Action, after that drink.

This enjoyable novel wryly describes the world of education and, while names are changed to protect the innocent, we know who ‘Modern Labour’ and ‘Today’s Tories’ are and understand the dilemma of whether to exclude or not to exclude a difficult teenage girl.

So Terry forms the Commonsense Party to abolish the Lords (and the Commons), locate government in Birmingham (where else?) and replace schools by “a family- supportive system of individual tuition”. Would he get your vote?

I was gripped to the end of the novel, and you will be too. Read it in the staffroom, with one ear open to all those pundits prattling about how to put the world right.

Keith Venables

Vote for Terry Park! by John Adcock. Deacon and Roberts. £7.99. ISBN 9780956406101.

Getting Shakespeare

For all those English teachers tired of hearing ‘But I don’t get Shakespeare’, here comes a guide complete with detailed lesson plans and everything you need to bring the Bard’s works to life.

The lessons prepared by the RSC are, as you would expect, accessible, covering the key plays Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The book encourages group work and explores themes as well as language.

The toolkit includes detailed plans for active approaches inspired by the RSC’s work in rehearsal. With lesson plans, worksheets, a CD-Rom and interactive whiteboard material and more, all linked to Assessing Pupils’ Progress criteria, the toolkit is essential to bring the Bard to life in Key Stages 2 and 3.

Claire Jenkinson

RSC Shakespeare Toolkit for Teachers. Methuen Drama. £42.50. ISBN 9781408114285.

Artful lessons

This series of books for the primary school will support any teacher in all areas of art. Giving clear, stand-alone units of work, the cross-curricular suggestions allow teachers to be creative and extend ideas into other areas.

Assessment opportunities are outlined alongside the objectives for each unit. CDs provide differentiated pupil self-evaluation and teacher assessment sheets. With a function to enable teachers and children to create their own virtual galleries as well as a wealth of resources, the CDs are invaluable.

Individually or collectively, this series is an excellent resource. We love them.

Laura Collinson

Art Express (Books 1 to 6). Series editor Julia Stanton. A&C Black. £31.49 book+individual licence. £135 book+site licence.

For pupils

Titles for teens

The Right Now! series has a low word count and is designed for teenagers with reading ages of six to eight years. They have high-impact graphics and titles reflect teen issues, for instance Fight, Dumped and Joyride. The books cost from £5.99.

The Shades books are aimed at slightly more able readers and have more text. Titles include Rising Tide and Coming in to Land. Each book costs from £4.99.

All the books in both series are well written. Visit the website for a comprehensive view of what is available for this very important sector of readers.

Liz Rhodes

Right Now! and Shades. Two series from Evans Books designed for teenagers with lower reading ability. See www.evansbooks.co.uk.

Not the usual WWII story

This book is extremely imaginative and compelling. I loved it, because it’s not the usual WWII book that one would expect. It’s about a young boy in Berlin named Piotr Bruck, who stays in an orphanage as his parents are away travelling, but one day some strange people in uniform turn up.

These are Nazis and are there to find young boys to become Hitlerites. Piotr gets chosen, for he is the perfect specimen for Hitler’s perfect race – white men with blonde hair and blue eyes.

He is sent to a new home to live with Professor Kaltenbach and his wife, but he has his own ideas about the situation, as he doesn’t want to become a Hitlerite, so this is his quest to get away from the terrors of Hitler’s war.

Bella-Rosa Katz, Year 8 Comberton Village College, Cambs

Ausländer by Paul Dowsell. Bloomsbury. £6.99. ISBN 9780747594192.

Stimulating fantasy

When teaching Key Stage 3 English I’m always on the lookout for a new book that will excite my latest class. If I had my department budget to blow then I’d purchase several editions of The Traitor Game. On the surface it seems like a fantasy novel but there’s more to it than it appears.

Two boys create a secret fantasy world called Evgard. When one of them feels their secret is betrayed it sets off a dangerous series of events. You’ll find it will stimulate interesting debates in class as it tackles betrayal, homophobia and bullying.

Lee Ryder

The Traitor Game by BR Collins. Bloomsbury Publishing. £6.99 p/b. ISBN 9780747597254.