If there is one teaching book you can recommend to buy this term, what would it be?
This is a well thought out book with plenty of really good advice. Some of it will be familiar to fans of the Teacher Toolkit website – but that doesn’t detract from it being nicely presented in one easy place. The book is ideally aimed at new teachers to the profession – and is split into five chapters with the idea that each chapter represents a focus for each year.
This sort of works but really the best advice is to read the whole book straight through and then maybe focus on the chapter that fits your career progression. The strength of the book is that it is highly practical.
There are plenty of books (of varying quality) on different aspects of teaching but this one addresses the real challenges and brings it all together. So, for example, there is great advice on setting up a TeachMeet as well as lesson planning structures. I particularly liked the template for handling parents’ evenings.
This is one of the most useful and well written general books about teaching I’ve read. It’s nicely presented and highly readable. It should be required reading for all NQTs and PGCE students. What’s even better is that it gives useful Twitter accounts to follow for even more advice.
A review by Ripple.
.Well, allow me to be a little indulgent and share some recommendations from others about my new book; Teacher Toolkit: Surviving Your First Five Years (in teaching). This short post was inspired by a wonderful comment by former headteacher, speaker, author and broadcaster @RichardGerver.
Review:
Currently in my 2nd year teaching after surviving my NQT year and have just discovered this book! Full of useful advice and though provoking ideas, will continue to delve in and out of this for many years to come! (by Rachel.)
Final Drafts:
Take a look at some of the draft pages from the inside of the book.
Ty_Goddard, previously an advisor to the Department for Children, Schools and Families on Extended Schools, discussed my book at the book launch party. He says;
It about how you survive in teaching; top tips; practical; really honest, frank and passionate. We have to sort out this recruitment and retention challenge. Ross talks about attrition in this book; about the loss of teachers in the first five years. It’s currently 40-50%. That’s shocking! It’s a massive investment and we’re losing too many people. Why? We need to ask ourselves those hard questions and this book has some of the answers. It’s fizzing with ideas!
If I can write a book, so can you …
