Develop a love for poetry at key stage three with the trusted Touchstones series. This diverse selection of over 150 poems features thought-provoking contemporary voices and much-loved favourites. Touchstones: A Teaching Anthology of Poetry will help you to: * Explain and contextualise poems across a broad range of genres and themes * Support your lessons with over 100 ready-made activities designed for independent, paired and group work * Challenge your students with additional activities specifically designed to stretch their learning * Build the skills required for the poetry element of the latest GCSE English Literature specifications, with chapters dedicated to comparative and unseen poetry * Introduce a range of poets commonly studied at GCSE, from William Wordsworth to Imtiaz Dharker * Introduce a range of contemporary poets, such as Kate Clanchy and Holly McNish, alongside more familiar classics * Support the implementation of the 2014 national curriculum at Key Stage 3 Michael Benton has recently published a new collection of poetry: 'In the Mind's Eye'. Available in bookstores now.

Discover the dinosaurs and prehistoric animals that once roamed across Earth and commanded the oceans and seas. Completely revised with comprehensive text and new images, The Kingfisher Dinosaur Encyclopedia brings dinosaur enthusiasts closer to prehistoric life than ever before. Colourful illustrations, 3D reconstructions and step-by-step sequences detail the latest scientific research about these magnificent creatures. Discover which baby dinosaur had a footprint smaller than a fifty pence coin, witness how a recent discovery has brought scientists closer to truly knowing dinosaurs' colouring and meet the scientists who have unearthed groundbreaking revelations. Dinosaurs and reptiles from around the world are shown in concise detail, including the giants discovered in Tanzania, the remarkable early bird fossils found in the Jehol Biota ecosystem in China, and the dinosaur bone bed in New Mexico. The Kingfisher Dinosaur Encyclopedia is perfect for home learning and for school - the ultimate guide that every dinosaur fan needs. Author Michael Benton is a renowned palaeontologist and has written of several dinosaur themed children's books, as well as consulting on media productions. He has even had a dinosaur named after him! Arranged thematically into key areas, the concise text is clear, accurate, and perfectly pitched, making this an unbeatable resource for home and school.

Drawing upon a wide range of biographies of literary subjects, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, this book develops a poetics of literary biography based on the triangular relationships of lives, works and times and how narrative operates in holding them together. Biography is seen as a hybrid genre in which historical and fictional elements are imaginatively combined. It considers the roles of story-telling, factual data in the art of life-writing, and the literariness of its language. It includes a case study of the biography of Ellen Terry, discussion of the controversial relationship between a subject's life and works, 'biographical criticism' and, through the issue of gender, the social and cultural changes biographies reflect. It frames a poetics on the basis of its strategy and tactics and demonstrates how the literal truth of verifiable data and the poetic truth of what is narrated are interdependent.

Michael Benton's book develops the concept of spectatorship as an answer to these questions. It explores the similarities and differences in our experiences of literature and the visual arts, and discusses their implications for pedagogy and their applications in cross-curricular work in the classroom.
Teachers will find that, while many of the visual and verbal texts may be familiar, the approaches to them offer fresh insights and a rich agenda for the classroom. Shakespeare, Fielding, Hogarth, Blake, Wordsworth, Constable, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Wilfred Owen, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney - the range of authors and artists discussed is both extensive and relevant to the National Curriculum and to post-16 and undergraduate courses.