This up to date text addresses primary science teaching in light of the new primary National Curriculum and the latest Teachers' Standards. Aimed at primary trainees and teachers, it provides creative, inspiring and practical ideas and approaches for teaching the full range of science topics. Each chapter is aligned to an area of the new National Curriculum and provides key vocabulary, details of common misconceptions and how to address them, teaching strategies and activities, cross-curricular links and health and safety points. Throughout there is a strong focus on science subject knowledge development and how to translate this into practice in the primary classroom. The book also encourages readers to reflect on their own subject knowledge of science and challenges them to critically evaluate their teaching in order to become more effective.

Thinking about the Teaching of Thinking provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Feuerstein's theory of Mediated Learning Experience and its related tools and programmes. It details up-to-date international and New Zealand research on the Feuerstein approach which reflects the current issues in the teaching of thinking. The book begins by defining what is meant by the teaching of thinking and provides an easy to understand explanation of the Feuerstein method and its value for children with learning challenges. It champions a 'whole school' approach to the teaching of thinking and details the practical tools and programmes developed by Feuerstein - such as Instrumental Enrichment and the Learning Propensity Assessment Device - to aid in its implementation. It also recognises the key importance of cultural factors in the teaching of thinking, bringing together the author's considerable research experience using the Feuerstein method in the multicultural New Zealand context with her extensive knowledge of international Feuerstein research. This book provides a user-friendly and unique coverage of the Feuerstein method for researchers and postgraduate students researching and working in educational psychology. It will also be of great value for teachers and parents looking to understand and decide on implementation of the Feuerstein approach in their schools.

This new and updated second edition of Debates in Physical Education explores issues physical education teachers encounter in their daily lives. By engaging with both established and contemporary debates, this volume challenges readers to think about and reflect on the relative validity of positions presented in order to develop their own reasoned and personal view in relation to the topics explored. Divided into four accessible sections, this book investigates and offers fresh insight into topics of central importance in physical education. Chapters include, for example: Physical education as a means or as an end in itself; Knowledge for physical education; The physical education curriculum; Assessment in physical education; Technology, pedagogy and physical education. Physical education beyond schools and teachers. Designed to stimulate discussion and support readers in their own research, writing and practice, Debates in Physical Education will be a valuable resource for any student or practising teacher engaged in initial teacher education, continuing professional development or Master's level study.

Originally published in 1993. The appearance of design and technology in the National Curriculum has offered primary teachers opportunities for imaginative and stimulating work which is directly related to the lives of their pupils. Its sheer scope can, however, be daunting for the teacher already overloaded with the other demands of the National Curriculum. Tina Jarvis provides some much needed guidance on strategies for including design and technology effectively within the whole curriculum, including the development of co-operative group-work and finding effective ways to assess individuals in group situations. The author also looks at how teachers can tackle subject areas which may be unfamiliar to them, such as systems, environments and economic enterprises.

Originally published in 1991. The central aim of this book is to make English in the National Curriculum accessible and relevant to all pupils. In attempting to meet this aim, the authors set out to bring together a theoretical basis for the main English profile components and practical suggestions for good practice for all schools. In the first section oracy, reading and writing are examined and in the second section three case studies describe a range of projects which have taken place in different schools.

This book shines a light on the best research into learning and the brain development that makes it all possible. Written by two distinguished education journalists, it provides an invaluable guide to the latest information for teachers and parents seeking to help children to make the best use of their potential and steer a true course through an often confused, noisy and crowded learning landscape where ideas compete and nothing can seem clear. Summarising the most up to date and significant research in a jargon-free and understandable way, this book provides readers with simple and clear access to knowledge and information about what really helps children learn and flourish. Whether you're a teacher who wants to encourage the right kind of parental support or a parent who wants to do the best for your child, this is an essential read. Drawing on expert analysis, interviews and example studies, the chapters tackle common misconceptions and myths, and explore crucial topics including: The use of neuroscience in education; The role of parents and how all parents can help their children learn; What works in the classroom and the best ways of teaching a child. The first of its kind, this seminal text is a unique resource for parents, carers, primary and secondary teachers, student teachers, policymakers and anyone interested in the development of children and how they learn.

Crisis, Controversy and the Future of Religious Education sets out to provide a much-needed critical examination of recent writings that consider and respond to the crisis in religious education and more widely to a crisis in non-confessional forms of religious education, wherever practised. The book is critical, wide-ranging and provocative, giving attention to a range of responses, some limited to the particular situation of religious education in England and some of wider application, for example, that of the role and significance of human rights and that of the relevance of religious studies and theology to religious education. It engages with a variety of positions and with recent influential reports that make recommendations on the future direction of religious education. Constructively, it defends both confessional and non-confessional religious education and endorses the existing right of parental withdrawal. Controversially, it concludes that the case for including non-religious worldviews in religious education, and for the introduction of a statutory, 'objective' national religious education curriculum for all schools, are both unconvincing on educational, philosophical and evidential grounds. Timely and captivating, this book is a must-read for religious and theological educators, RE advisers, classroom teachers, student teachers and those interested in the field of religious education.

This timely book tackles underlying issues that see disproportionate numbers of African American males with dyslexia undiagnosed, untreated, and falling behind their peers in terms of literacy achievement. Considering factors including dialectic linguistic difference, limited phonological awareness, and the intersectionality of gender, language, and race, the studies included in this volume illustrate how classroom practices at preschool and elementary levels are failing to support students at risk of reading and writing difficulties. Promoting Academic Readiness for African American Males with Dyslexia shows that it is possible to provide every girl and boy, and particularly African American boys with effective support and appropriate interventions enabling them to read at a level that is conducive to ongoing academic performance and success. This, argue the authors of this volume, is vital to the social, emotional, moral, and intellectual development of our society. This edited volume was originally published as a special issue of Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties. It will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the field of African-American Education, Educational Equity, Race studies, Multiple learning difficulties and Literacy development.

Written for students, practitioners and policy-makers, "Primary Education: The Key Concepts "is a clear and accessible guide to the most important ideas and issues involved in the education of children at this crucial and formative time in their lives. Alphabetically arranged and fully cross-referenced to ensure ease of use, entries include both curriculum specific and generic theoretical terms, such as:
* assessment
* objectives
* coping strategies
* differentiation
* behavior
* special needs
* time management.
Written by an experienced teacher and lecturer, "Primary Education: The Key Concepts" is a concise yet comprehensive text that takes into account the everyday realities of teaching. Readable and user-friendly, it is a first-class resource for the primary practitioner at all levels.

Originally published in 1988, this book discusses the gradual move from the separation of home and school to an increasing acceptance of the central role of parents as partners in their children's education. The book looks at the progress made towards real partnership with parents. An eminently practical account of the advantages of working with parents and the ways in which this can be achieved, it will be of special value to student teachers and practicing teachers, and to parents interested and involved in their children's education. The authors review national trends and developments since the issue was first seriously raised by the Plowden Report in 1967. Then focusing on one urban primary school (Redlands Primary School, Reading), they describe the changes which have taken place over a seven-year period, from the perspective of teachers, parents, and children. The book includes a personal account by Angela Redfern (formerly Deputy Head at Redlands) of what it has been like to be a teacher during this period of change, and telling comments from both parents and children on all aspects of involvement in school. Partnership with parents emerges as a course of action which reaps benefits for all concerned, and the authors stress that the developments taking place in schools like Redland are important for all schools, irrespective of their social class or ethnic composition.

Originally published in 1984, this book considers the ever-increasing pressure that teachers are under both to demonstrate and maintain their professional understanding and competence. Curriculum development has long been the subject of scrutiny, with some authorities arguing that the primary curriculum should be a diluted version of the secondary curriculum. Professor Blyth presents a convincing case for a primary curriculum carefully constructed to enhance the relationship between the various aspects of the child's development and total experience. Initially examining how children in the primary age range do develop and experience the world, the book goes on to consider the implications of this for shaping the curriculum. These are traced through different aspects of the primary curriculum, from physical, moral and aesthetic development to an understanding of the social world. The book concludes with an assessment of this approach to primary education within an international context and prospects for the future. An important work by a leading authority, Development, Experience and Curriculum in Primary Education is a guide to the professional development of primary teachers, building on their experience and judgement.

This book explains and demonstrates the teaching strategy of asking learners to construct their own examples of mathematical objects. The authors show that the creation of examples can involve transforming and reorganizing knowledge and that, although this is usually done by authors and teachers, if the responsibility for making examples is transferred to learners, their knowledge structures can be developed and extended. A multitude of examples to illustrate this is provided, spanning primary, secondary, and college levels. Readers are invited to learn from their own past experience augmented by tasks provided in the book, and are given direct experience of constructing examples through a collection of many tasks at many levels. Classroom stories show the practicalities of introducing such shifts in mathematics education. The authors examine how their approach relates to improving the learning of mathematics and raise future research questions.
*Based on the authors' and others' theoretical and practical experience, the book includes a combination of exercises for the reader, practical applications for teaching, and solid scholarly grounding.
*The ideas presented are generic in nature and thus applicable across every phase of mathematics teaching and learning.
*Although the teaching methods offered are ones that engage learners imaginatively, these are also applied to traditional approaches to mathematics education; all tasks offered in the book are within conventional mathematics curriculum content.
"Mathematics as a Constructive Activity: Learners Generating Examples" is intended for mathematics teacher educators, mathematics teachers, curriculum developers, task andtest designers, and classroom researchers, and for use as a text in graduate-level mathematics education courses.

Learning Beyond the Objective in Primary Education explores an existential perspective for pedagogy proposed in response to the current technocratic paradigm of education prevalent in many countries worldwide. This new perspective is termed 'Bildung's Repetition.' The book seeks to encourage policy makers and educational practitioners to consider the impact of education on children, over and above the meeting of set targets and objectives. Located in a philosophical framework, this book considers how children might learn authentically in the light of their own personal contingency. A series of case studies reflecting the effectiveness of this perspective through the curriculum is provided, each illustrating how 'Bildung's Repetition' allows for personalized meaningful learning within current structures. Recommendations for practice are provided, encouraging all stakeholders in education to consider the value of this perspective, and effect a 'ten-degree shift' within educational thought. This unique book fuses theory with practice, and will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of primary education and teacher training. It will also be of interest to school leaders and practicing teachers.

Changing schools at 11 or 12+ is a critical, often traumatic event in a pupil's career. Earlier studies had looked at this transitional stage from the schools' point of view, in the light of institutional aims and objectives. Originally published in 1984, this richly detailed and readable study looks at it from the pupils' point of view: it illustrates their perceptions of the transfer, their anxieties and their experiences. The book is the result of a research project, in which children transferring from a typical middle school to a typical comprehensive in a Midlands town were observed over a period of eighteen months. The authors reveal various ways in which children adjust to a large, more complex school organisation, to new forms of discipline and authority, and new demands in school work. They emphasise the significance of teenage culture during this period, and identify an important area of interplay between school culture and sub-culture. They pay special attention to gender identities, and the ways in which these affect pupils' responses to different subjects in the curriculum. Finally, they consider the theoretical and policy implications of their survey, and make positive recommendations for improving school and classroom practice at both primary and secondary level.

Extending the discussion of critical content analysis to the visual realm of picturebooks and graphic novels, this book provides a clear research methodology for understanding and analyzing visual imagery. Offering strategies for "reading" illustrations in global and multicultural literature, chapter authors explore and bring together critical theory and social semiotics while demonstrating how visual analysis can be used to uncover and analyze power, ideologies, inequity, and resistance in picturebooks and graphic novels. This volume covers a diverse range of texts and types of books and offers tools and procedures for interpreting visual images to enhance the understandings of researchers, teachers, and students as they engage with the visual culture that fills our world. These methods are significant not only to becoming a critical reader of literature but to also becoming a critical reader of visual images in everyday life.

Focusing on issues relating to gender, gender relations, and discrimination, this book provides nuanced insight into the experiences of young Latina women and their teachers in a North American middle school. Latina Students' Experiences in Public Schools details how students navigate questions of gender, gender discrimination, and gender relations in the context of post-feminism, and in view of widespread claims that advocacy for girls and women has been outmoded by anti-discriminatory legislation. Drawing on an ethnographic study that focuses on gender segregation and dominance, relational identities, and the role of teachers in reinforcing gender dynamics, the text deftly demonstrates the effect of postfeminist policy and ideology on gender equity and achievement in public schools. In particular, the text illustrates that young Latina women continue to face both physical and verbal harassment on a daily basis, which is often overlooked by school faculty and administrators. A powerful and timely text, the volume advocates for action to counter school-based gender discrimination. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, policy makers, libraries in the field of gender and sexuality in education, gender studies, secondary education and urban education.

This book challenges educational discourse in relation to teaching about Africa at all levels of the education system in the Global North, with a specific case study focusing on the Republic of Ireland. The book provides an interrogation of the proliferation of negative imagery of and messages about African people and African countries and the impact of this on the attitudes and perceptions of children and young people. It explores how predominantly negative stereotyping can be challenged in classrooms through an educational approach grounded in principles of solidarity, interdependence, and social justice. The book focuses on the premise that existing educational narratives about the African continent and African people are rooted in a preponderance of racialised perceptions: an 'impoverished' continent dependent on the 'benevolence' of the North. The cycle of negativity engendered as a result of such portrayals cannot be broken until educators engage with these matters and bring critical and inquiry-based pedagogies into classrooms. Insights into three key pedagogical areas are provided - active unlearning, translating critical thinking into meaningful action, and developing a race consciousness. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of education and teacher education. It will be of interest to those involved in youth work, as well as intercultural and global citizenship youth trainers.

A collection of 150 unique games and activities to help support teaching of maths in the primary classroom. Designed with busy teachers in mind, the Classroom Gems series draws together an extensive selection of practical, tried-and-tested, off-the-shelf ideas, games and activities guaranteed to transform any lesson or classroom in an instant. Easily navigable, allowing you to choose the right activity quickly and easily, these invaluable resources are guaranteed to save you time and are a must-have tool to plan, prepare and deliver first-rate lessons.

Teachers who want to cut lesson planning time should welcome this series. The new editions are revised in line with the new literacy framework and bring you new models. Writing Models aims to help teachers cover every sort of writing type they need; fine tune lessons by following key teaching points for each model; and deliver the new literacy units to pupils of varying ability using different versions of the same model. Each book in the series gives you: A bank of easy-to-use, photocopiable models for writing covering poetry, narrative and non-fiction Key teaching points for each model Simpler and harder examples for differentiation The newly revised second edition for Year 4 has been fully updated and restructured in line to deliver new units from the new framework and includes new writing models. Lesson planning has never been easier! The second edition of Writing Models Year 4 contains: Stories with historical settings; Stories from other cultures (new) and Stories that raise issues & dilemmas (new) Poems to explore form and Performance poems (new) Stories set in imaginary worlds and Plays (new) Newspaper reports (new); ICT-texts (new) and Persuasive writing including a model based on a DVD (new)

Much more than simply recording events, pedagogical documentation is a revolutionary educational approach that enables practitioners to capture and understand the ways in which children learn and think. Exploring the use of pedagogic documentation across five different cultures, this book offers a unique insight into the conditions and methods through which pedagogical documentation might become an effective means of connecting teaching and learning. By drawing on theory, research-based evidence and practice, Understanding Pedagogic Documentation in Early Childhood Education reveals pedagogic documentation as an instigator for critical reflection on practice, for the creation of new pedagogical approaches and improvements in quality. Observing and documenting the lived educational experience of children and practitioners is emphasised as a means of acknowledging their voice and rights, of revealing their knowledge, their competences, their attitudes and dispositions to learning. Offering contextualised approaches and considering the challenges involved in observing and documenting day-to-day practice in early childhood settings, chapters encourage professionals to reflect and recognise the value of documentation for children, staff members and the wider community. Making a crucial contribution to the debates on pedagogical documentation, Understanding Pedagogic Documentation in Early Childhood Education offers researchers, students, policy-makers and professionals a comprehensive, and multicultural perspective on pedagogical documentation.

Much more than simply recording events, pedagogical documentation is a revolutionary educational approach that enables practitioners to capture and understand the ways in which children learn and think. Exploring the use of pedagogic documentation across five different cultures, this book offers a unique insight into the conditions and methods through which pedagogical documentation might become an effective means of connecting teaching and learning. By drawing on theory, research-based evidence and practice, Understanding Pedagogic Documentation in Early Childhood Education reveals pedagogic documentation as an instigator for critical reflection on practice, for the creation of new pedagogical approaches and improvements in quality. Observing and documenting the lived educational experience of children and practitioners is emphasised as a means of acknowledging their voice and rights, of revealing their knowledge, their competences, their attitudes and dispositions to learning. Offering contextualised approaches and considering the challenges involved in observing and documenting day-to-day practice in early childhood settings, chapters encourage professionals to reflect and recognise the value of documentation for children, staff members and the wider community. Making a crucial contribution to the debates on pedagogical documentation, Understanding Pedagogic Documentation in Early Childhood Education offers researchers, students, policy-makers and professionals a comprehensive, and multicultural perspective on pedagogical documentation.

This volume demonstrates how the social and instructional worlds that children inhabit influence their poetry writing and performances. Drawing on rich vignettes of students from different racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, it describes and analyzes the work of eight to ten-year-old U.S. students involved in a month-long poetry unit. Children Writing Poems outlines the value of a 'poetic-functional' approach to help children convey a poem's meaning and mood, and expresses the need for educators to scaffold children's oral readings and performances over time.

Transforming Early Learners into Superb Readers: Promoting Literacy at School, at Home, and within the Community aids elementary educators, reading specialists, school administrators, private and public educators, parents, and caregivers who want to help early learners become proficient readers. The early years are the most important for children, because they are the formative years, so it is vital for children to build a solid reading foundation when they are most receptive. Andrea Nelson-Royes contends that if all these individual players collectively help to develop a child's reading readiness, all children may thrive from a high-quality education and a love of literacy.

A collection of 150 unique games and activities to help support teaching of phonics in the primary classroom. Designed with busy teachers in mind, the Classroom Gems series draws together an extensive selection of practical, tried-and-tested, off-the-shelf ideas, games and activities guaranteed to transform any lesson or classroom in an instant. Easily navigable, allowing you to choose the right activity quickly and easily, these invaluable resources are guaranteed to save you time and are a must-have tool to plan, prepare and deliver first-rate lessons.