Essays for Excellence: A collection of GCSE essays to support students and teachers in achieving success


Book Description

Have you ever marked a set of student essays and been left with little time to develop a resource which pushes your students further? This collection will offer you a time-saving resource to alleviate that workload, alongside developing your subject knowledge and raising the academic aspirations of your students. As teachers of English, Laura Webb and Becky Jones, continually found themselves having to spend precious hours answering essay questions ourselves so that they could guarantee the quality of models our students are exposed to. This collection offers you the opportunity to reclaim your work/life balance whilst safe in the knowledge that your pupils are excelling. You will find essays on a range of the most popular texts (‘Macbeth’, ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’ and various poems) that will push students of every ability and help them unlock their potential. These essays are written with all of the major exam board expectations in mind, and ranked based on the exam board criteria for each level. All essays are accompanied by examiner commentary with student-friendly phrasing. Improve your subject knowledge, share responses and plans with your students, or use in your department as a standardisation resource; this collection offers a wide range of opportunities.




Why I Write


Book Description

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times




Understanding Undergraduates


Book Description

In this unique work, the authors explore teachers' beliefs about university students' performance and expose which beliefs are well-founded, which are mistaken, which mask other underlying factors, and what they can do about them.




The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning


Book Description

Featuring chapters by the world's foremost scholars in music education and cognition, this handbook is a convenient collection of current research on music teaching and learning. This comprehensive work includes sections on arts advocacy, music and medicine, teacher education, and studio instruction, among other subjects, making it an essential reference for music education programs. The original Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, published in 1992 with the sponsorship of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC), was hailed as "a welcome addition to the literature on music education because it serves to provide definition and unity to a broad and complex field" (Choice). This new companion volume, again with the sponsorship of MENC, explores the significant changes in music and arts education that have taken place in the last decade. Notably, several chapters now incorporate insights from other fields to shed light on multi-cultural music education, gender issues in music education, and non-musical outcomes of music education. Other chapters offer practical information on maintaining musicians' health, training music teachers, and evaluating music education programs. Philosophical issues, such as musical cognition, the philosophy of research theory, curriculum, and educating musically, are also explored in relationship to policy issues. In addition to surveying the literature, each chapter considers the significance of the research and provides suggestions for future study. Covering a broad range of topics and addressing the issues of music education at all age levels, from early childhood to motivation and self-regulation, this handbook is an invaluable resource for music teachers, researchers, and scholars.




How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students, Second Edition


Book Description

Properly crafted and individually tailored feedback on student work boosts student achievement across subjects and grades. In this updated and expanded second edition of her best-selling book, Susan M. Brookhart offers enhanced guidance and three lenses for considering the effectiveness of feedback: (1) does it conform to the research, (2) does it offer an episode of learning for the student and teacher, and (3) does the student use the feedback to extend learning? In this comprehensive guide for teachers at all levels, you will find information on every aspect of feedback, including • Strategies to uplift and encourage students to persevere in their work. • How to formulate and deliver feedback that both assesses learning and extends instruction. • When and how to use oral, written, and visual as well as individual, group, or whole-class feedback. • A concise and updated overview of the research findings on feedback and how they apply to today's classrooms. In addition, the book is replete with examples of good and bad feedback as well as rubrics that you can use to construct feedback tailored to different learners, including successful students, struggling students, and English language learners. The vast majority of students will respond positively to feedback that shows you care about them and their learning. Whether you teach young students or teens, this book is an invaluable resource for guaranteeing that the feedback you give students is engaging, informative, and, above all, effective.




Professional Values and Practice


Book Description

The professional code of the General Teaching Council lists eight new standards, each of them analysed here in detail using questions and activities to describe what trainee teachers need to know, understand and demonstrate as they work towards Qualified Teacher Status. Each of the eight standards cover the following issues: expectations, diversity and achievement personal and professional values values in the classroom values, rights and responsibilities in the wider community the community of the school professional relationships personal and professional development professional responsibility. This practical and jargon-free guide features an extensive range of examples and suggestions for further reading, designed to help those in their early professional development.




The Meaning of Success


Book Description

The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women at Cambridge makes a compelling case for a more inclusive definition of success. It argues that in order to recognise, reward and realise the talents of both women and men, a more meaningful definition of success is needed. Practical ways of achieving this are explored through interviews with female role models at the University of Cambridge. First-person stories bring alive the achievements and challenges women experience in their working lives, and the effect gender has on careers. The book stimulates a debate about how to bring about a more inclusive working environment.




An Ethic of Excellence


Book Description

The author gives us a vision of educational reform that transcends standards, curriculum, and instructional strategies. He argues for a paradigm shift-a schoolwide embrace of an "ethic of excellence" and with a passion for quality describes what's possible when teachers, students, and parents commit to nothing less than the best. The author tells exactly how this can be done, from the blackboard to the blacktop to the school boardroom.




Educational Design Research


Book Description

The field of design research has been gaining momentum over the last five years, particularly in educational studies. As papers and articles have grown in number, definition of the domain is now beginning to standardise. This book fulfils a growing need by providing a synthesised assessment of the use of development research in education. It looks at four main elements: background information including origins, definitions of development research, description of applications and benefits and risks associated with studies of this kind how the approach can serve the design of learning environments and educational technology quality assurance - how to safeguard academic rigor while conducting design and development studies a synthesis and overview of the topic along with relevant reflections.




The Good Teacher


Book Description

This book helps teachers, student-teachers, teacher trainers and others interested in the sociology and psychology of education to explore and make better sense of professional practice by examining that practice in the context of popular views.