It is fairly obvious that the amount that a class learns depends at least in part on the way in which they are taught. As we all know, lecturing to a class full of 15 year olds is generally less effective than any form of teaching in which the students play an active part.
But such an awareness does not tell us which methods of teaching are the most effective.
It was to answer this that I got together with a group of fifteen teachers, deputy heads and heads who were doing research at Nottingham University to try to work out exactly which methods of teaching worked best.
We came up with ten approaches that we all seemed to find highly effective – and these were noted down (along with a set of policy statements on these and related topics – just in case Ofsted wanted to see them).
But then we extended the subject to take in Methods of Learning, and through our discussions we came up with over 20 different methods of learning that we wanted to integrate into our methods of teaching.
In the end I believe that what we created was a set of approaches to classroom teaching which cover virtually every possibility and which genuinely offer exciting and stimulating ways of improving teaching and learning in secondary school.
At the end of the discussion we took a final decision – to publish our discussions as a report in photocopiable form and on disk, so that anyone who purchased it could make copies to use across their department, or even the whole school.
Format of the book
The book is available direct from the publisher. Sample pages are available to download free of charge from the website at http://tinyurl.com/npferk
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Title: Methods of Teaching: order code:T1402EMN; ISBN 978 1 86083 475 2
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Photocopiable book: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
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Text on CD: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
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Both photocopiable book and text on CD: £36.94 plus £3.95 delivery
Methods of ordering - please quote order code T1402EMN
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By post to First and Best, Hamilton House Mailings Ltd, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Rd., Corby, Northants NN17 4HH
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By fax on 01536 399 012
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By phone with a credit card or with an official school order number on 01536 399 011
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On line with a credit card at http://tinyurl.com/npferk
Tony Attwood
First and Best in Education
