Books

Reviews and descriptions courtesy of Amazon.co.uk.
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28 Rants: Newer Writing This is a compilation of Phil Beadle's more recent writing. It includes his piece 'White Working Class Pleasures' which has been described by one reader as being like 'a really articulate punch in the stomach', as well as outtakes from 'Rules for Mavericks' and some travel writing, including the long form 'A Moron in the Balkans'. Predominantly, it looks at the various absurdities of classroom practice and their interface with politics and class, and it does so in a stylishly written and unsurprisingly hilarious manner.	£12.99 from Amazon
Literacy Literacy is important. This book is about getting it right. Its author is an expert in teaching children how to speak and write well, and has transformed the oral and written communication skills of many thousands of students. In How to Teach: Literacy he shares how he does it and what he knows about this most important of all skills and reveals what every teacher needs to know in order to radically transform literacy standards across the curriculum. The stories, anecdotes and insights into the many practical activities in this book are, in turn, and often in the same sentence, heart breaking, inspiring, shocking and, as ever, funnier and more readable than those in an education book have any right to be. Contains everything teachers need to know to teach literacy effectively, regardless of their subject specialism or phase. If you want to make sure that every child leaves your class knowing the rules and how to use them, this is the book for you. If you think that literacy is difficult, or boring, or not your responsibility, be ready to be proved wrong. Discover practical activities, spelling strategies, tips for teaching punctuation and grammar guides that are anything but didactic and dull.	£12.99 from Amazon
How to Teach Beadle is of course a one-off charismatic and, so some would say, inimitable teacher. But here he puts together a rich array of delightful insights into the art of teaching in such a way that everybody will be able to take something to shape their own practice. It s one for the staff library and a must-read for all new teachers. --Sir Tim Brighouse Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education London Teaching is one of the most cognitively engaging, emotionally draining, and physically demanding occupations there is. In fact, it is such a complex job that one life-time is not enough to master it, which is what makes it such a wonderful career. No matter whether you are a beginning teacher or a 20-year veteran, one can always get better at it, and this book is a great resource for helping in that journey. Beginning teachers will find lots of useful advice about this incredibly hard job; practical, sure, but also realistic about what is achievable in typical classrooms. And even the grizzled classroom veteran will find something new, or at least a new way of looking at old things, here. And this book is funny. It is laugh-out-loud, embarass-yourself-in-public funny. Every teacher should read it (in private). --Professor Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director, Institute of Education, University of London Shocking stories, fruity language, stand-up humour, gruesome anecdotes, and politically-incorrect hints -- Phil Beadle takes the 'horrible histories' approach to the how-to-teach manual. The result is a funny, informative, practical and realistic book overflowing with memorable, cut-out-and-keep, easy-to-follow tips. Reading this book will be a whole lot more fun than your first teaching practice - and more valuable too. Beadle is the wise, but mischievous, old lag in the corner of the staffroom - pull up a chair and wonder at his stories of survival. They could save your teaching career. --Mike Baker, BBC News/The Guardian	"The ultimate (and ultimately irreverent) look at what you should be doing in your classroom if you want to be the best teacher you can possibly be." £13.93 from Amazon
Dancing About Architecture: A Little Book of Creativity Dancing About Architecture is a compendium of outrageous ideas: ideas about how to take more risks and ideas about how to come up with better ideas. Ideas about how to plan experiences that leave people who are in the same room as those ideas awestruck, and ideas to help you avoid the textbook, the worksheet, the barely stifled yawn. From using The Book of Revelation as a planning device; to seeing every experience through the prism of physical activity or song; to measuring a poem to find its real heart: it outlines a methodology that, if you use it, will make you an even greater creative force than you already are. Published 2011 This book kicks the desks over, opens the windows and lets learning in. I highly recommend this book it s a guide to the bright future of education. --Mhairi Grealis, Course Director, The Richmond Theatre Here is a book about teaching, and more importantly, learning, that is cool, irreverent and entertaining! From the reference to Frank Zappa in Chapter One, I knew this book was pure Phil Beadle. Buy it, read it. --Richard Gerver, Educational Commentator, Author and Broadcaster A masterpiece for creativity-led education. Where Sir Ken Robinson tells us what to do in education, Beadle shows us how to do it. --Kwela Sabine Hermanns, Innovation Specialist	£7.19 from Amazon
Michael Gove Colouring-in Book The Michael Gove Colouring-in Book is a differentiated learning resource for dumb kids, featuring several charming representations of Britain's foremost and best loved educationalist.	£8.98 from Amazon
Altogether Now... The Ultimate Plenary Book The only book full of ideas for lesson plenaries you`ll ever need. You paint an outside wall. It rains. What happens to the paint? It runs off, of course! So it is with our students. We teach them something. We can t be bothered to do the recap, the plenary, as we don`t have any ideas. They leave the lesson. They promptly forget what you have taught them. There was no point their being in the lesson in the first place. The world continues turning. This practical little book of plenaries does what it says. It delivers a series of simple ideas for how to make your lesson endings or mid-lesson recaps interesting, engaging and cognitively challenging. Apply the ideas in this book and your students will leave the lesson with the information you have taught them still in their heads.	£12.99 from Amazon
Literacy Through Football Skills For several years I have been teaching what I call the embedded clause with the use of a football and three stooges. When I started doing this I would refer to this sentence structure as being the ‘Gazza shimmy’, in that it is where the sentence takes a diversion, as Gazza, might, in his pomp, have done as he glided effortlessly around a lumpen opponent. I don't call it the Gazza shimmy anymore. Kids now think of the finest footballer Britain has ever produced as being just a drunk with a shockingly bad haircut. As an example of how the concept worked however, rather than a straight, A - B, single clause sentence: 'Gazza fell over the ball,' it is where the sentence takes a diversion: 'Gazza, because he was fat and drunk, fell over the ball.' This diversion I call, for want of any real education or grammatical knowledge, an embedded clause, as it beds in. This teaching technique almost works as a way of getting this most difficult of writing techniques over to the kids. Almost. But what it definitely does every time I use it is immediately perk the boys' interest. The moment the football comes out in the lesson, they contemplate something they haven't managed all year: paying attention.	Available from Amazon
Why Are You Shouting At Us A structured approach to managing behaviour for anyone who refuses to accept students' backgrounds as an excuse for underachievement. In their witty and very practical book, Phil Beadle and John Murphy guide teachers through the dos and don'ts of behaviour management based on their decades of experience teaching in the most challenging schools. They highlight the importance of managing your own behaviour, as well as really understanding that of your students, and provide practical strategies for embedding positive behaviour management techniques into teaching practice. Why are you shouting at us? is essential reading for anyone preparing to work in a challenging school as well as for any teacher who wants to improve their behaviour management skills.	£15.09 from Amazon
Bad Education - The Guardian Columns 'Bad Education' is a collection of Phil Beadle's columns from the Guardian's Education section and is a laugh-a-minute romp through more or less every aspect of British Education over the last decade, which makes the occasional, entirely accidental, serious point. Published February 2011 A book to be read, dipped into and returned to again and again. But, above all a book to be read by all who have the interests of young people and their teachers at heart. John Dunford, Chair, Whole Education Chair, Worldwide Volunteering Chair, Chartered Institute of Educational Assesors	£12.86 from Amazon
Could Do Better!: Help your kid shine at school Phil Beadle is a former rock musician, the winner of the Secondary Teacher of the Year Award 2005, and the inspirational teacher who wowed the nation with his unorthodox teaching methods in Channel 4 series THE UNTEACHABLES. There, his bizarre but effective approach to teaching English included Punctuation Kung-Fu, and reciting Macbeth to a field of cows. Through techniques such as these Beadle seemingly achieved the impossible by successfully drawing out the desire to learn from a group of failing pupils. Now his focus is on spreading the word to parents: every child has the ability to learn, and to do better at school. In this book he tells parents that there is no such thing as a stupid child, only boring lessons. Intelligent, unconventional, humorous and inspirational, this hands-on guide blends personal anecdotes with the nitty gritty of how to best unlock your children's unique intelligence, and how to ensure they have the best possible chance to succeed at school.	£6.74 from Amazon

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