An ideal survival guide for novice teachers, Starting Strong helps new teachers gain confidence and competence to flourish and reduce stress during the first teaching year. The authors provide time-tested strategies and guidelines for designing curriculum and instruction, classroom layout suggestions for an optimal learning environment, and frameworks for establishing procedures that promote positive individual and group behavior. This invaluable handbook also offers: methods for effective assessment, samples of oral and written communication for parents and colleagues, ways to create classroom newsletters, techniques for using web sites for interactive learning and reflection questions for teachers at the end of each chapter

As public services budgets are cut, the 'Payment by Results' (or Pay for Success) model has become a popular choice in public sector commissioning. Social Impact Bonds are a variant of Payment by Results also promoted by proponents of social (or impact) investing. But how effective are these approaches? This short book asks whether the Payment by Results model is an efficient way to unlock new capital investment, help new providers to enter the 'market' and foster innovation, or whether the extension of 'neoliberal' thinking, complexity and the effects of managerialism undermine the effective delivery of social outcomes. Synthesising lessons from the UK and US for the first time, the book draws on published work in both countries together with insights from the authors' own research and consultancy experience to offer a balanced and bipartisan overview of a field where the evidence has been weak and there are strong ideological agendas in play.

An ideal survival guide for novice teachers, Starting Strong helps new teachers gain confidence and competence to flourish and reduce stress during the first teaching year. The authors provide time-tested strategies and guidelines for designing curriculum and instruction, classroom layout suggestions for an optimal learning environment, and frameworks for establishing procedures that promote positive individual and group behavior. This invaluable handbook also offers: methods for effective assessment, samples of oral and written communication for parents and colleagues, ways to create classroom newsletters, techniques for using web sites for interactive learning and reflection questions for teachers at the end of each chapter