Teacher Toolkit


Book Description

'This is a book by a teacher still in the classroom after 20 years. Want to know how to survive? Read this book; it's fizzing with ideas.' Ty Goddard, Co-founder of the Education Foundation A compendium of teaching strategies, ideas and advice, which aims to motivate, comfort, amuse and above all reduce your workload, by bestselling author Ross Morrison McGill, aka @TeacherToolkit. Teacher Toolkit is a must-read for newly qualified and early career teachers and will support you through your first five years in the primary or secondary classroom. It is packed with advice, tips and ideas for all aspects of teaching practice, from lesson planning to marking and assessment, behaviour management and differentiation. Ross believes that becoming a teacher is one of the best decisions you will ever make, but after more than two decades in the classroom, he knows that it is not an easy journey! He shares countless anecdotes from his own experience, from disastrous observations to marking in the broom cupboard, and offers a wealth of strategies to help you become a true Vitruvian teacher: one who is resilient, intelligent, innovative, collaborative and aspirational. Complete with a bespoke Five Minute Plan in every chapter, photocopiable templates, QR codes, a detachable bookmark and beautiful illustrations by renowned artist Polly Nor, Teacher Toolkit is everything you need to ensure you are the best teacher you can be, whatever the new policy or framework. Ross is the bestselling author of Mark. Plan. Teach., Just Great Teaching and 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding Lessons. Vitruvian teaching will help you survive your first five years: Year 1: Be resilient (surviving your NQT year) Year 2: Be intelligent (refining your teaching) Year 3: Be innovative (taking risks) Year 4: Be collaborative (working with others) Year 5: Be aspirational (moving towards middle leadership) Start working towards Vitruvian today.




A Student's Guide to Academic and Professional Writing in Education


Book Description

This concise handbook helps educators write for the rhetorical situations they will face as students of education, and as preservice and practicing teachers. It provides clear and helpful advice for responding to the varying contexts, audiences, and purposes that arise in four written categories in education: classroom, research, credential, and stakeholder writing. The book moves from academic to professional writing and chapters include a discussion of relevant genres, mentor texts with salient features identified, visual aids, and exercises that ask students to apply their understanding of the concepts. Readers learn about the scholarly and qualitative research processes prevalent in the field of education and are encouraged to use writing to facilitate change that improves teaching and learning conditions. Book Features: · Presents a rhetorical approach to writing in education. · Includes detailed student samples for each of the four major categories of writing. · Articulates writing as a core intellectual responsibility of teachers. · Details the library and qualitative research process using examples from education. · Includes many user-friendly features, such as reflection questions and writing prompts.




Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education


Book Description

Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education offers detailed guidance to scholars at all stages-experienced and new academics, graduate students, and undergraduates-regarding how to write about learning and teaching in higher education. It evokes established practices, recommends new ones, and challenges readers to expand notions of scholarship by describing reasons for publishing across a range of genres, from the traditional empirical research article to modes such as stories and social media that are newly recognized in scholarly arenas. The book provides practical guidance for scholars in writing each genre-and in getting them published. To illustrate how choices about writing play out in practice, we share throughout the book our own experiences as well as reflections from a range of scholars, including both highly experienced, widely published experts and newcomers to writing about learning and teaching in higher education. The diversity of voices we include is intended to complement the variety of genres we discuss, enacting as well as arguing for an embrace of multiplicity in writing about learning and teaching in higher education.




Doing Academic Writing in Education


Book Description

This clear, reader-friendly book is carefully designed to help readers gain confidence and acquire competence in their academic writing abilities. It focuses on real people as they write and actively involves readers in the writing process. The authors' innovative approach encourages reflection on how professional writing initiatives connect to the personal self. For pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate students, school administrators, educational specialists, and all others involved in the educational enterprise, effective writing is important to professional success. Organized to help the reader move progressively and confidently forward as a writer of academic prose, Doing Academic Writing in Education: Connecting the Personal and the Professional features: *activities to engage readers in connecting their writing endeavors to their personal selves, and in discovering their own writing attitudes, behaviors, strengths, and problem areas; *practical applications to inform and support the reader's writing initiatives--including opportunities to engage in invention strategies, to begin a draft, to revise and edit a piece of writing that is personally and professionally important, and to record reflections about writing; *the voices of the authors and of graduate students who are pursuing a variety of academic writing tasks--to serve as models for the reader's writing endeavors; and *writing samples and personal stories about writing shared by experts in various contexts--offering hints about conditions, self-reflections, and habits that help them write effectively. All students and professionals in the field of education will welcome the distinctive focus in this book on connecting the personal and the professional, and the wealth of practical applications and opportunities for reflection it provides.




Effective Learning and Teaching of Writing


Book Description

Effective Learning and Teaching of Writing is a handbook on research on the effective teaching and learning of writing. It is a reference for researchers and educators in the domain of written composition in education. Effective Learning and Teaching of Writing covers all age ranges and school settings and it deals with various aspects of writing and text types. Research methodology varies from experimental studies to reflective classroom practitioners’ research. This new volume in the series Studies in Writing brings together researchers from all kinds of disciplines involved in writing research and countries in their endeavour to improve the teaching of written composition. It is the result of co-operation of researchers all over the world and shows that in spite of the differences in educational regions over the world, research in writing shares similar problems, and tries to find answers, and generate new questions. The body of knowledge in this volume will inspire researchers and teachers to improve research and practice.




The Writing Revolution


Book Description

Why you need a writing revolution in your classroom and how to lead it The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback. Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, The Writing Revolution can make a dramatic difference. And the method does more than improve writing skills. It also helps: Boost reading comprehension Improve organizational and study skills Enhance speaking abilities Develop analytical capabilities The Writing Revolution is as much a method of teaching content as it is a method of teaching writing. There's no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction. But perhaps what's most revolutionary about the TWR method is that it takes the mystery out of learning to write well. It breaks the writing process down into manageable chunks and then has students practice the chunks they need, repeatedly, while also learning content.




Writing for the Educational Market


Book Description

A step-by-step guide to planning a career in writing for the educational market for children. Includes an introduction to understanding publisher catalogers and writing for series, sample query letters to publishers and many hints from the author's extensive career in educational writing.




Just Great Teaching


Book Description

'Bursting with fresh ideas, packed with practical tips, filled with wise words, this is an inspiring guide for all teachers.' Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility, University of Exeter and co-author of What Works? 50 tried-and-tested practical ideas to help you tackle the top ten issues in your classroom. Ross Morrison McGill, bestselling author of Mark. Plan. Teach. and Teacher Toolkit, pinpoints the top ten key issues that schools in Great Britain are facing today, and provides strategies, ideas and techniques for how these issues can be tackled most effectively. We often talk about the challenges of teacher recruitment and retention, about new initiatives and political landscapes, but day in, day out, teachers and schools are delivering exceptional teaching and most of it is invisible. Ross uncovers, celebrates, and analyses best practice in teaching. Supported by case studies and research undertaken by Ross in ten primary and secondary schools across Britain, including a pupil referral unit and private, state and grammar schools, as well as explanations from influential educationalists as to why and how these ideas work, Ross explores the issues of marking and assessment, planning, teaching and learning, teacher wellbeing, student mental health, behaviour and exclusions, SEND, curriculum, research-led practice and CPD. With a foreword by Lord Jim Knight and contributions from Priya Lakhani, Andria Zafirakou, Mark Martin, Professor Andy Hargreaves and many more, this book inspires readers to open their eyes to how particular problems can be resolved and how other schools are already doing this effectively. It is packed with ideas and advice for all primary and secondary classroom teachers and school leaders keen to provide the best education they possibly can for our young people today.




Teaching Academic Writing


Book Description

Student academic writing is at the heart of teaching and learning in higher education. Students are assessed largely by what they write, and need to learn both general academic conventions as well as disciplinary writing requirements in order to be successful in higher education. Teaching Academic Writing is a 'toolkit' designed to help higher education lecturers and tutors teach writing to their students. Containing a range of diverse teaching strategies, the book offers both practical activities to help students develop their writing abilities and guidelines to help lecturers and tutors think in more depth about the assessment tasks they set and the feedback they give to students. The authors explore a wide variety of text types, from essays and reflective diaries to research projects and laboratory reports. The book draws on recent research in the fields of academic literacy, second language learning, and linguistics. It is grounded in recent developments such as the increasing diversity of the student body, the use of the Internet, electronic tuition, and issues related to distance learning in an era of increasing globalisation. Written by experienced teachers of writing, language, and linguistics, Teaching Academic Writing will be of interest to anyone involved in teaching academic writing in higher education.




The Educator's Guide to Writing a Book


Book Description

The Educator’s Guide to Writing a Book is for educators who dream of sharing their knowledge and skills with a broader audience. This exciting resource provides step-by-step guidance on how to set publishing goals, create well-written content and resource material, develop an informative yet accessible writing style, prepare professional level manuscripts, and anticipate each stage in the publishing process. Chapters include authentic writing examples, tips from veteran authors and publishing professionals, and supportive resources. The Educator’s Guide to Writing a Book is an invaluable guide that helps aspiring and novice authors move publishing goals from dreams to reality. .