WRITER’
Perfect practical tips for teachers at every level
50 Teaching & Learning Approaches: Simple, easy and effective ways to engage learners and measure their progress By Sharron Mansell (edited by Ann Gravells) Sage: paperback, 160 pages
I was intrigued to take a look at this book. As an experienced teacher, I have come across many such resources that I recommend to my students. So, what could I say about this one? Well, what a great little book I found it to be. I have been in further education for more than 20 years, and for the past 10 in teacher education. And, no matter how long you have been teaching, this book is for you. It provides practical, quick and easy activities, which are suitable
across all walks of teaching. It is written in a way that makes it easy to dip into and find something to suit everyone. You will find some of these activities in other books and may have tried some of them yourself already, but what I found really helpful was the additional information following each one. This helps planning and differentiation to ensure students get the most from the activities. Anything that helps to save time when planning is always a bonus and this book delivers just that. It doesn’t matter how long you have been in teaching, you can always learn something new, and this book has given me some different activity ideas to try with my teaching students. They can then follow these activities through into their own classrooms. It’s a book that I will be sharing with, and recommending to, all of my trainee teachers.
Review by Elaine Battams is teaching and learning leader and course manager for teacher training at Barnfield College. She was among the first teachers to gain Advanced Teacher Status (ATS) through SET.
WRITERS BLOG
MEMBER OFFER SET members can claim 20 per cent off the RRP for this book when ordered from Sage. Use code SAGE20. The offer is valid until 30 April, 2020.
It is packed with Geoff’s inimitable insight and gift for wonderfully detailed explanation of eminently practicable approaches to teaching. If one were being picky then perhaps the book might benefit from slightly larger dimensions, allowing the text, and especially the tables and diagrams, to breathe more easily. The book never seems
heavy going thanks to Geoff’s conversational writing style and the layout which breaks the text up into bullets, boxes, diagrams and tables. Geoff takes readers
through the processes of co-constructing meaning and learning, differentiating learning, questioning, modelling, correcting and checking learning, and much more. The final section helps
teachers make sense of, and use, educational and pedagogic research, rounding off this teaching turbocharger of a book perfectly.
MEMBER OFFER To claim 20 per cent off the RRP on this book and selected titles in the Oxford Teacher Training Guides series, order from OUP using code OTTG20. Offer runs until 30 April, 2020.
By Gillian Bridge It’s become the new mantra of teaching, so much so that I sometimes wonder if the primary requirement of an aspiring teacher is that they have ‘a passion for their subject’, to which the one and only acceptable answer has to be, ‘Oh, yes, I’m just sooo passionate about my subject!’ I bet there are lots of teachers and trainers who, in the darkest and innermost recesses of their truth, wonder such unspeakable things as ‘Do I actually give a monkey’s about quadratic equations, or even Shakespeare’s attitude to gender equality?’ Or – even more unspeakable, if not almost unthinkable – ‘is passion either a desirable or even necessary measure or antecedent for good teaching?’ There, I’ve said it! And I say quite a bit more on the subject in my two books, The Significance Delusion and Sweet Distress: how our love affair with feelings has fuelled the mental health crisis (and what we can do about it). In the latter, I look at evidence that suggests that too much emoting can be very bad for our mental health. Emotional and zealous over-commitment to ideas, causes and philosophies can encourage narrow, silo-thinking which is bad for mental health, and the health of society as a whole. Perhaps, just sometimes transmitting knowledge, stripped of overly emotional filtering, is the best form of teaching. And how liberating might that be for many teachers? I feel quite passionately about the possibility in fact.
Gillian Bridge is a teacher, psycholinguistic consultant and author. Her latest book Sweet Distress: how our love affair with feelings has fuelled the mental health crisis is published by Crown House Publishing on March 31.
MEMBER OFFER SET members can get 20 per cent off Gillian’s new book when ordered from Crown House Publishing. Use code inTuition20. Offer valid until 30 April, 2020.
inTUITION ISSUE 39 • SPRING 2020 37
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