Teaching skills,motivating students,assessment techniques, curriculum for excellence, UK

BEST BET BOOKS

LEARNING

Book	Rating	Ian's comments
David Perkins Smart Schools The Free Press, New York, 1992.	2C	The best and most accessible overview of the importance of teaching for understanding and the issues we face in implementing it in schools.
Donna Brandes and Paul Ginnis The Student Centred School Simon and Schuster, Hemel Hempstead, 1990	4D	The most readable and practical book on developing a learning school
Mindstore Discovery Creating a Confident School	4D	A lot more expensive than anything else on the list, but also the only one that comprises a set of pupil materials. They are designed to help pupils build their self -belief through positive thinking. It is based firmly on our current understandings about how people learn. The pack links pupils’ learning and teachers’ learning in very effective ways.
Jenny Mosley Turn Your School Around LDA	4D	The original book form the best known authors and practitioners on Circle Time, which will be well known to primary teachers. There have been others published since.
Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence Bloomsbury 1996.	2C	The best seller that is in the process of changing people’s attitudes to intelligence. A must in terms of making the theory accessible. A bit longer than it needs to be though.
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish How to Talk so Kids Can Learn Simon and Schuster, 1996.	4D	Book designed for parents and teachers.
Robert Martin Teaching Through Encouragement Prentice Hall 1980.	4D	A great wee book full of practical ideas to help teachers help pupils develop a sense of responsibility.
Chris Dickinson Effective Learning Activities Network Press, 1996.	4D	Takes Perkins’ work and provides eminently practical advice as to how to look at existing materials and make them more effective in terms of helping pupils to demonstrate and develop their understandings.
Robert Fisher Teaching Children to Think Simon and Schuster, 1990.	4D	By far the best book around on teaching thinking skills, particularly in the primary school, but very applicable to secondary.