While many educational books focus on creative and critical thinking skills, this ground-breaking work is the first to deal specifically with the ability to understand, question and evaluate information presented, broadly speaking, in story form. Story or narrative is central to our understanding of and interaction with the world around us. We only have to think of the ‘mini stories’ encapsulated in many advertisements; the way that topics in science – the story of human evolution for example, in history and other subjects present themselves; the power of myths and legends to act as guides to moral behaviour; and the pervasive way that gossip, rumour and superstition can spread – to recognise the benefits of heightening such awareness in young learners. Understanding the World Through Narrative explores the narrative structure of fiction, but uses this as a template to show how the story form appears in mythology and modern urban folklore, science, history, the media – including advertising; in our internal dialogues (stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others), and how narrative structure can be used in curriculum planning to enhance children’s learning. The book contains over 160 thinking/discussing/researching activities for use in the classroom and as project work. Chapters can be used independently, although they are arranged with increasing degrees of sophistication and challenge. This fascinating work is an essential resource for any teacher of upper primary and lower secondary students, covering not only children’s evolving intellectual ability and promoting curiosity and critical engagement but also enhancing their mental and emotional wellbeing.

While many educational books focus on creative and critical thinking skills, this ground-breaking work is the first to deal specifically with the ability to understand, question and evaluate information presented, broadly speaking, in story form. Story or narrative is central to our understanding of and interaction with the world around us. We only have to think of the ‘mini stories’ encapsulated in many advertisements; the way that topics in science – the story of human evolution for example, in history and other subjects present themselves; the power of myths and legends to act as guides to moral behaviour; and the pervasive way that gossip, rumour and superstition can spread – to recognise the benefits of heightening such awareness in young learners. Understanding the World Through Narrative explores the narrative structure of fiction, but uses this as a template to show how the story form appears in mythology and modern urban folklore, science, history, the media – including advertising; in our internal dialogues (stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others), and how narrative structure can be used in curriculum planning to enhance children’s learning. The book contains over 160 thinking/discussing/researching activities for use in the classroom and as project work. Chapters can be used independently, although they are arranged with increasing degrees of sophistication and challenge. This fascinating work is an essential resource for any teacher of upper primary and lower secondary students, covering not only children’s evolving intellectual ability and promoting curiosity and critical engagement but also enhancing their mental and emotional wellbeing.

* Technology has led to the increasing visualisation of how children receive, manipulate and process information * This book takes visualisation as a starting point uses for introducing and developing a range of thinking skills and strategies for learning * It will help students improve and develop observational skills, assimilate visual information, increase inferential thinking, boost vocabulary, develop metacognitive abilities and much more...

Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing: Story Steps for 9-12 Year Olds is a practical and easy-to-use teacher resource helping children across a wide age and ability range to develop the skills necessary to write more effectively. Step-by-step instructions encourage children to tackle tasks of increasing difficulty while broadening their knowledge and experiences of fictional genres. With chapters separated into distinct genres: ghost story, fantasy, science fiction, history, pirate story, thriller and Gothic horror, this book: Offers a summary at the start of each chapter to help teachers select the relevant activities. Covers multiple aspects of storytelling from narrative structure, plots, characters and settings to vocabulary, word choice, sentence structure and punctuation. Provides a cross referencing grid showing which aspects of writing appear in each chapter. Includes guidance notes, extension activities and general tips. Adaptable to different teaching situations, this book offers the opportunity for teachers to work through the book genre by genre or take a 'skills route' with different activities from different chapters to create their own programme of study. Fully illustrated and supporting the requirements of the National Curriculum, Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing is a valuable aid for all Key Stage 2 teachers.

Using Comic Art to Improve Speaking, Reading and Writing uses children 's interest in pictures, comics and graphic novels as a way of developing their creative writing abilities, reading skills and oracy. The book 's underpinning strategy is the use of comic art images as a visual analogue to help children generate, organise and refine their ideas when writing and talking about text.

In reading comic books children are engaging with highly complex and structured narrative forms. Whether they realise it or not, their emergent visual literacy promotes thinking skills and develops wider metacognitive abilities. Using Comic Art not only motivates children to read more widely, but also enables them to enjoy a richer imagined world when reading comics, text based stories and their own written work.

The book sets out a range of practical techniques and activities which focus on various aspects of narrative, including:

• using comic art as a visual organiser for planning writing
• openings and endings
• identifying with the reader, using different genres and developing characters
• creating pace, drama, tension and anticipation
• includes Kapow techniques to kick start lessons
• an afterword on the learning value of comics.

The activities in Using Comic Art start from this baseline of confident and competent comic-book readers, and show how skills they already possess can be transferred to a range of writing tasks. For instance, the way the panels on a comic 's page are arranged can serve as a template for organising paragraphs in a written story or a piece of non-fiction writing. The visual conventions of a graphic novel the shape of speech bubbles or the way the reader 's attention is directed can inform children in the use of written dialogue and the inclusion of vivid and relevant details.

A creative and essential resource for every primary classroom, Using Comic Art is ideal for primary and secondary school teachers and TAs, as well as primary PGCE students and BEd, BA Primary Undergraduates.

* Technology has led to the increasing visualisation of how children receive, manipulate and process information * This book takes visualisation as a starting point uses for introducing and developing a range of thinking skills and strategies for learning * It will help students improve and develop observational skills, assimilate visual information, increase inferential thinking, boost vocabulary, develop metacognitive abilities and much more...

Using Comic Art to Improve Speaking, Reading and Writing uses children s interest in pictures, comics and graphic novels as a way of developing their creative writing abilities, reading skills and oracy. The book s underpinning strategy is the use of comic art images as a visual analogue to help children generate, organise and refine their ideas when writing and talking about text.

In reading comic books children are engaging with highly complex and structured narrative forms. Whether they realise it or not, their emergent visual literacy promotes thinking skills and develops wider metacognitive abilities. Using Comic Art not only motivates children to read more widely, but also enables them to enjoy a richer imagined world when reading comics, text based stories and their own written work.

The book sets out a range of practical techniques and activities which focus on various aspects of narrative, including:

• using comic art as a visual organiser for planning writing
• openings and endings
• identifying with the reader, using different genres and developing characters
• creating pace, drama, tension and anticipation
• includes Kapow techniques to kick start lessons
• an afterword on the learning value of comics.

The activities in Using Comic Art start from this baseline of confident and competent comic-book readers, and show how skills they already possess can be transferred to a range of writing tasks. For instance, the way the panels on a comic s page are arranged can serve as a template for organising paragraphs in a written story or a piece of non-fiction writing. The visual conventions of a graphic novel the shape of speech bubbles or the way the reader s attention is directed can inform children in the use of written dialogue and the inclusion of vivid and relevant details.

A creative and essential resource for every primary classroom, Using Comic Art is ideal for primary and secondary school teachers and TAs, as well as primary PGCE students and BEd, BA Primary Undergraduates.

Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing: Story Steps for 9-12 Year Olds is a practical and easy-to-use teacher resource helping children across a wide age and ability range to develop the skills necessary to write more effectively. Step-by-step instructions encourage children to tackle tasks of increasing difficulty while broadening their knowledge and experiences of fictional genres. With chapters separated into distinct genres: ghost story, fantasy, science fiction, history, pirate story, thriller and Gothic horror, this book: Offers a summary at the start of each chapter to help teachers select the relevant activities. Covers multiple aspects of storytelling from narrative structure, plots, characters and settings to vocabulary, word choice, sentence structure and punctuation. Provides a cross referencing grid showing which aspects of writing appear in each chapter. Includes guidance notes, extension activities and general tips. Adaptable to different teaching situations, this book offers the opportunity for teachers to work through the book genre by genre or take a 'skills route' with different activities from different chapters to create their own programme of study. Fully illustrated and supporting the requirements of the National Curriculum, Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing is a valuable aid for all Key Stage 2 teachers.