What is the most effective way of coping with the continual change that is now an inevitable part of school administration?

If ever a job has changed in the last 10 years it is that of the bursar and school business manager.

Even the title of the job has been varied, for as one correspondent to the School of Education Administration and Management put it recently, “My pay slip calls me the ‘Administrator’, it says ‘Bursar’ on the door to my room and the head introduces me to visitors as the School Business Manager.”

In a world where even the job title can be variable throughout the day, what chance is there for the bursar (or SBM or Chief Administrator) to cope with the ever changing nature of the school?

The fact is that change is everywhere. The government makes change its watch-word. Independence from LA control puts more pressure on school administrations, and quite often the boundaries as to who actually has the final sign off on new procedures becomes rather confused.

As a result, stress rises and a sense of progressive improvement is replaced by a sense of making do. With few people seeming to know how schools are supposed to react to something as huge as the raising of the compulsory education leaving age over the next few years, it is not surprising that there is often a sense of the school not quite knowing what is coming next.

However, it is only by recognising change as an inevitable part of running the school’s administrative systems and by accepting that the drive towards efficiency and effectiveness is part of the bursar’s job that these various parts of the school process can be brought back into balance.

Hence the new edition of the Bursar’s Survival Guide.

The aim of this comprehensive report is to develop school improvements and efficiencies through changes in administrative procedures. Such action inevitably enhances the personal standing of the bursar and those in the bursar’s department and reduces stress levels throughout the school’s administration.

The report opens with a single example idea, one idea that takes only a few minutes to implement but which could reduce the school’s non-salary expenditure by 10% at a stroke, without changing the quality of the goods and services provided.

After that the volume considers 57 separate topics that affect the role of the bursar and the bursar’s department in the school, and analyses each one in a way that is (in most cases, if not all) different from the way in which standard text books on bursaring and financial control approach the topic.

Quite simply The Bursar’s Survival Guide will help to ensure a smoothly run bursar’s office generating excellent results in all aspects of its work in the years to come.

You can see some sample pages at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/bursar/T1795.pdf

Publisher’s reference: T1795EMN ISBN: 978 1 86083 885 9

Prices

  • Photocopiable book £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Book plus CD £31.94 plus £3.95 delivery

Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report… please quote the order ref: T1795EMN

 

 

Pursue your own research project with a Cambridge Advanced Diploma

You may remember we wrote to your school earlier in the summer about part-time study opportunities at the University of Cambridge.

We’ve had a lot of enquiries from teachers since then about our research-based Advanced Diploma courses, so I’d like to take this opportunity to explain a little more about what’s on offer and the bursary funding available to teachers.

Please feel free to circulate this email to anyone within your school who you think might be interested in developing their subject knowledge through research.

About the Cambridge Advanced Diploma

Your own individual project with individual supervision from a world expert, the Undergraduate Advanced Diploma is a unique opportunity to tailor your own programme of study, explore a passion in depth and gain a University of Cambridge qualification.

The Advanced Diploma is a research-based course, so that means you can choose the research topic and, with an expert in the field to supervise you, you are on the way to gaining a qualification that is equivalent to the third year of an undergraduate degree. The course will give you an excellent grounding in research methods if you’re looking to continue your research at a higher level.

This is a part-time programme so you can combine study with a busy teaching life. What’s more, the teaching format makes study accessible whether you live close to Cambridge or on the other side of the country.

You’ll just need to commit to travelling to Cambridge seven times over two years: first for the induction day when you’ll meet tutors and supervisors and other Advanced Diploma students, and then for six individual supervisions. In between visits, you’ll have access to our virtual learning environment so that you can chat with fellow students and your supervisor and access electronic resources.

Subjects you can study

You can study an Advanced Diploma in the following subjects:

  • Archaeology
  • Ecological Monitoring and Conservation
  • English Literature
  • Historic Environment
  • History of Art
  • International Development (subject to University approval)
  • Local History
  • Philosophy
  • Study of Religion

Teacher bursaries available

The course fee for an Advanced Diploma is £2,200, payable in six interest-free instalments. Teacher bursaries are available to help fund the cost of study:

  • State-funded teachers are eligible for a bursary of £200, courtesy of Cambridge University Press
  • Non-state-funded teachers who are new to ICE are also eligible for a bursary of £200, courtesy of the James Stuart Fund.

Early application is recommended as funds are limited.

How to apply

We typically accept two enrolments of students for Advanced Diplomas – the first intake in November and the second in February.

The application period for the November 2013 intake is now open and the deadline for applications is 9 September 2013.

The application period for the February 2014 intake will open in October 2013, with a deadline for applications of 1 December 2013.

Find out more about Advanced Diplomas and apply online >>

Find out more

Please don’t hesitate to contact me at enquiries@ice.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions or if you would prefer not to receive emails from us in future.

Best regards

Paul Ireland
Communications and Marketing Manager
Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge
Madingley Hall, Madingley, Cambridge, CB23 8AQ

Tel: +44 (0)1223 746262
Email: enquiries@ice.cam.ac.uk

The number of tablets used in schools is increasing, but how can you prevent them from getting “lost”?

According to research by BESA (British Educational Suppliers Association), the number of schools using tablets is rising significantly, and they predict that by the end of the year 258,000 tablets will be used in schools.

While using tablets clearly benefits students, this revolution can lead to a problem. For it is clear that the number of tablets that are going missing temporarily is growing at an alarming rate.

This is not to say that the “lost” machines are removed with criminal intent. In fact, it is only a tiny minority of machines that are actually stolen.

What happens is that a person in the school takes a tablet to use legitimately, but then subsequently this specific tablet is hard to locate.

To help with this most schools mark all their portable IT equipment.

The difficulty here, however, is that tablets are invariably made of either aluminium or hard plastic with a cured paint to make them hard and scratchproof. This makes putting identification marks on the equipment difficult, because you simply can’t ‘etch’ anything into aluminium or hard plastics as they do not have a porous surface.

One way out of this dilemma is to use (Dantech’s) aluminium trakaplates which, because of the thickness and strong adhesive that they use, are near impossible to remove. In fact, the only way you could get such an identification label off a machine would be to lever it off with a screwdriver – which is extremely hard to do. There are more details on these on our website.

An alternative approach is ID Silver Mark labels. These labels are precision cut stencils which can include your school name. The labels are then painted with UV ink to show up under a UV light should the label be removed. There’s more information on these also on our website.

If you have tablets or similar objects of value in the school and you would like a way to identify them as school property, please do see our website – www.dantech.co.uk for our complete range of solutions.

Alternatively please call us on 01354 688 488 or email us sales@dantech.co.uk for free and unbiased help and advice.

 

 

Perfect the Past Tense for GCSE French

Perfect the Past Tense for GCSE French is a resource which will give your students structured practice in a complex grammatical area which is vital to their success at GCSE.

It comprises a pack of photocopiable worksheets which will guide them step by step through the rules and uses of the perfect tense and help them to gain a ‘C’ or above at GCSE level. Explanations are clearly illustrated with plenty of examples to work through, and answers are included at the back of the book. Most of the exercises are designed to be worked through on an individual basis but there are also a couple of games which can be played in small groups.

Perfect the Past Tense has been designed and written by French teachers and tested in class where it proved to be immensely beneficial.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/modlang/T1675.pdf

ISBN: 978 1 86083 730 2; Order code: T1675emn

The volume is available as…

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £26.94 plus £3.95 delivery

Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the book or CD…

 

 

Teacher Motivation: the low-cost high gain approach to school improvement

Teacher motivation is arguably one of the simplest ways of obtaining a high level of departmental improvement without it costing anything. However many managers in schools have had little training in motivational techniques.

The argument is simple: in most organisations, motivating the staff is a central part of the work of the senior management. No matter how professional ones colleagues are thought or expected to be, it is realised that they are also human – and all humans can have ups and downs. We all like to be told we are doing well, we like hear about how our work is contributing to the overall well-being of the organisation, and when we are asked to take on new work, we like to be thanked.

In many ways the application of this to schooling is obvious. When the choice is between the highly motivated individual with the personal drive to make a difference, or the teacher who lacks that drive and for whom teaching is what happens between holidays, there is only one answer. We want the motivated teacher.

And yet we all of us observe the teacher whose level of motivation declines.

Teacher Motivation: the low-cost high gain approach to school improvement is a report which has been used in hundreds of schools across the UK as the model for improving motivation among teachers.

It is provided both as a CD (which can be loaded onto the virtual learning environment) and as a photocopiable book, so that individual sections can be copied and handed to colleagues, who then return for a short in-school seminar on the particular topic being reviewed.

A sample of the book is available on line at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1573.pdf

Prices

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £31.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

When ordering the book please quote the reference T1573EMN

Raising Money for Secondary Schools

There are four ways in which secondary schools can increase the amount of money that they have to spend each year: by gaining additional support from parents, through donations from businesses, through income from sponsorship projects, and through efficiency savings.

Raising Money for Secondary Schools considers each of these approaches in turn and considers not only approaches that work, but also popular fund-raising methodologies that are often witnessed but are rarely successful.

Indeed, one of the big problems that schools can have with fund-raising is that many of the time-honoured methods of raising or saving money no longer work at all effectively.

When a school comes up against this issue and sees that the amount of money being raised or saved is in decline, there is sometimes a tendency simply to say, “fund-raising doesn’t work any more”. However, this explanation is generally not correct. Rather it is the case that the ways in which businesses and individuals respond to appeals for support have changed.

Further it is also true that what appears to be the common sense approach to gaining efficiency savings simply don’t work. Efficiency savings are possible, but for most schools this is only true when the school follows a particular approach.

This volume also asks the reader to focus on the position of the donor, and consider what sort of appeal will work. The reader is also encouraged to approach different types of organisations in different ways, rather than sending out identical emails and letters to all local companies, large and small.

There are also details of how the school should point out the benefits that will accrue to the donor, as well as to the school.

The volume concludes with a review of 22 separate sponsorship plans and a review of how efficiency savings can be made – often with savings that can be in excess of the amount of money that can be brought in through fund-raising.

Raising Money for Secondary School by Tony Attwood is available as a photocopiable book or on CD Rom which can itself be copied or loaded onto the school’s learning platform or intranet.

ISBN: 978 1 86083 801 9 Order code: T1801emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1801.pdf

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £26.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

 

 

Fostering creativity within the curriculum – Key Stage 2 Composing

All teachers want to give their pupils the best education. Currently there is a debate about whether it is better to follow a strict curriculum or foster a freer creativity.

David Stoll’s KEY STAGE 2 COMPOSING is designed to reference, use and fulfil the requirements of the curriculum in a new way which allows all primary school teachers – not just music specialists – to encourage and develop creativity in their pupils. The lessons and projects, carefully described and with full practical notes and explanations, are fun and rewarding. Based on listening and analysing sounds, and then making patterns and stories out of them, they are, in fact, an excellent back-up for lessons in all subjects.

KEY STAGE 2 COMPOSING covers every aspect of primary school creative music making. Each lesson in the book is broken down into five and ten minute blocks, with each step fully detailed and accompanied by explanatory notes for the teacher. As well as a complete set of lessons there are several short- and long-term composing projects for the pupils to work.

Though full of strategies and tips for teachers with a music background, KEY STAGE 2 COMPOSING is specifically written for teachers who have no knowledge of music theory at all and little confidence in teaching music. The book is copiable throughout which means it can be shared by KS2 teachers throughout the school.

David Stoll is the well-known composer of SEALSONGS as well as concert, theatre and television music. He was commissioned by the DfES to run a project investigating how composers may work with teachers in primary schools, and to write a handbook for schools and composers: Building music (DfES 2005). David regularly runs composing workshops and delivers INSETs in schools and for LEAs around the country.

Sample pages of the book may be downloaded from http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/primary/T1752.pdf

Publisher’s catalogue number T1752emn; ISBN: 978 1 86083 714 2

Prices

  • Book or CD: £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Book plus CD: £31.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Download from the on-line shop: £16.95

Methods of ordering – please quote catalogue number T1752emn

 

 

How schools become efficient and how they maintain efficiency

According to the government document “Improving Efficiency in Schools,” the average secondary school ought to be able to save around £100,000 a year in efficiency savings, while the average primary school should be able to save around £25,000 a year.

And to be clear, those are not one-off savings. The report stressed that these savings ought to be achievable this year, next year and every year.

To achieve these terrific savings, the report said, all the schools have to do is take a look at how other, more efficient, schools are handling matters, and copy their practices.

Yet if it were as easy as that, surely by now, most schools should be feeling extremely well off, as inefficiencies are removed and the savings mount up in school bank accounts, simply waiting to be used on other educational ventures.

Sadly, as we know, this is not true. And it is not true for one very simple reason: efficiencies arise not just by copying other schools (although this can help somewhat) but mostly through the introduction and maintenance of what might be a called “an efficiency mindset” throughout the school.

The process of achieving an “efficiency mindset” has been explored and examined in detail by school managers and administrators over the past five years in a number of schools – schools which as part of this exploration really have made incredible efficiency savings.

Now for the first time the way in which schools are making savings is described in one volume: “The Efficient School.”

This volume reveals not only many of the projects that schools have introduced in recent years in order to achieve efficiencies, but also the vital processes which these schools introduce to ensure that objections to change are overcome and that changes, once implemented, are maintained and developed.

As such report explores not only areas in which savings can be made, but also the way in which the whole issue of changing well-established processes and habits can be handled in a school.

The Efficient School is available in copiable form (as a printed volume or on CD) so that it can be distributed to all interested members of staff.

ISBN: 978 1 86083 811 8 Order code: T1803emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1803.pdf

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £31.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

 

Can teachers use classic games to improve children’s numeracy skills?

The Scrabble board game has been transformed into a number’s game called ‘Numenko’ where the letters are now numbers.

Now sums, strategy and solutions are the objects of the game. Numenko has been used with children by parents and teachers alike.

It allows children to practice using their number skills in a fun way. The game naturally differentiates between abilities because the children choose their next ‘call’.

We have put together a wonderful package for Maths departments to use a combination of ways to encourage and excite children about Maths. Card games that use colour and shapes like Symbotica to number tiles used in Numenko board game and the Numenko-in-a-bag version too.

We have also included packs of Top Careers in Maths pack that bring a greater awareness of maths careers. If you would like to obtain your Departmental Package please have a look through our site for further information.

Elemental Publishing Ltd
78 Bush Grove
Kingsbury
London
NW9 8QX

t. 020 8123 9378
f. 0870 486 2293
m. 07939 609 126

Activities for Mentoring Young People – Stephanie George

The activities within this volume provide specific structured tasks that can be used during mentoring meetings and to support mentoring intervention.

They will help build rapport, provide evidence of progress through assessment and cover specific issues such as improving attendance, time management, study skills, how to think more positively, conflict resolution and anger management.

Within the volume there are 20 mentoring-specific activities that link pastoral and curriculum aspects of learning, thus linking school work with the whole child.

Each activity is mapped against Ofsted Spiritual Moral Social and Cultural Development criteria addressing student attitudes to learning, attendance and punctuality, considering progress and addressing communication skills.

Through this the volume encourages consistently high expectations of students, improving the quality of learning effectively and giving constructive feedback.

The first activity provides an opportunity to build rapid rapport with a student and then gives the students the opportunity to assess themselves before they develop a set of SMART targets and create a plan of action.

The book then continues through a further 40 tasks as the work of helping the students develop and reach their maximum potential continues.

The activities aim to provide specific structured tasks that can be used during mentoring meetings and support mentoring intervention by:

1. Offering issue-specific activities, e.g. the activity ‘I’m Seeing Red’.

2. Provide structure for building rapport, e.g. the anger-issue activity ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’.

3. Give opportunities for written evidence of progress for the student, e.g. the student self-assessment and reassessment activities.

All of the activities are accompanied by reproducible activity sheets such as assessment and planning forms, information sheets, charts, action plans, cards and questionnaires. Most of the activities can be used discretely as standalone activities. However, one or two run consecutively e.g. baseline assessment and subsequent reassessment. Any activity can be selected to address a particular need with a student.

At the very heart of this book is a set of activities that enable mentors to demonstrate the impact of mentoring intervention. Most importantly, the activities, once complete, will provide users with evidence of work with students that is demonstrable both to them and to other stakeholders.

Stephanie George is a teacher, trainer and author of The Learning Mentor Manual (Sage, 2010), the leading educational textbook on mentor practice in England. She has experience of working with teams of mentors in a variety of challenging settings. Stephanie has been responsible for the training and development of Learning Mentors since their inception and regularly runs courses and INSET on all aspects of mentoring practice in schools. She is also the recipient of two Department for Education Excellence in Cities awards.

Stephanie and her team have just been announced as the 2013 winners of the TES Support Stars competition designed to reward the achievements of support staff across the UK.

A4, 92pp plus FREE CD-Rom

ISBN 978-1-909380-03-5

Order code 062-HH, £24.99

To order please telephone 01604 870828, fax 01604 870986, email orders@loggerheadpublishing.co.uk. visit the website www.loggerheadpublishing.co.uk or post to Loggerhead Publishing Ltd, PO Box 928, Northampton NN7 9AP

The Beginner’s Guide to Circle Time

Circle Time is an effective way of teaching Social and Emotional Learning and character Education, as well as being a method that promotes safety, inclusiveness, fun, team work and deep thinking.

The Beginner’s Guide to Circle Time is suitable as a first time introduction to Circle Time for new teachers or as a refresher for experienced teachers wanting to revive their skills and understanding. The book covers:

• What is Circle Time? • Role of the Facilitator • How do you do Circle Time? • Managing behaviour

Provides explanations and instructions for all the types of Circle Time strategies including:

• Welcoming & Name Games • Rapport Building Games • Sentence Completions •Pair-Share • Sequencing Games •Stories • Pass Around the Circle Games • Mixing Games •Silent Statements • Imagination Games • Team Games

Also included is an explanation of the importance of reflection as part of the Circle Time process and easy-to-use reflection sheets that may form the basis of a student journal.

Resource sheets for feelings, behaviour, character education, Circle Time themes, sample sessions and session planners all make this a comprehensive and practical resource.

BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO CIRCLE TIME Ref: 306H £19.99

TO ORDER:
Post: Small World, 9 Burnham Place, Syresham, Northants, NN13 5HT
Tel: 01280 850 305
Fax: 01280 850 718

Email: orders@smlworld.co.uk
www.smlworld.co.uk

How good are you at negotiation?

There is one way in which virtually every school in the UK could save itself a considerable sum of money each year.

Negotiation is something most of us think we are good at because we do it every day. We negotiate with colleagues, we negotiate with students. If we have a family at home we also spend time negotiating with them. (After all which parent has not at some time resorted to, “You can watch TV after you have done your homework”?)

But there is no doubt that most of us working in schools don’t have much background in negotiation with suppliers. We tend to accept the contract that suppliers offer us, sign it, and expect everything to be fine.

If we do negotiate it is usually to try to get a discount without necessarily noticing that in so doing we might actually be negatively affecting other aspects of the purchase.

And yet the contract between the school and the retailer offers an opportunity for each side to be specific about what is possible, to clarify assumptions and to enter into a relationship which is satisfactory and beneficial for both parties.

It is because many schools pay little attention to the contracts that they sign that the book Contract Matters:

Connecting the Education and Contract World has been written. It exists because many schools find it nigh on impossible to recover from having entered into a bad contract. Invariably all they can do is see the contract through and rue day it was signed.

Contract Matters contains numerous tips in everyday language for anyone in a school who is in charge of managing contracts. It lists the do’s and don’ts and prompts everyone to investigate assumptions before making decisions.

One minor change to a contract made as a result of reading this volume will pay for the book many times over.

Contract Matters book costs £35.00 plus £3.95 postage and packing. Further information is on-line
at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=760

Order code: CMAAA £35.00 ISBN: 978 0 9876527 3 7

Sample pages can be found at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/bursar/ContractMatters.pdf

You can purchase the book

Authors wanted to write books and manuals for schools

If you are contemplating writing a book that could sell to other teachers we would like to hear from you. Or perhaps you have a set of lesson plans or PowerPoints that could be useful to other teachers.

First and Best is particularly interested in publishing the following types of educational resources:

  • Material of interest to teachers on a department-wide or school-wide basis – often texts which teachers will read and then return to a staff meeting to discuss.
  • Subject specific teaching resources – of practical use to the teacher in the classroom.
  • Special needs and behaviour management materials.
  • Information for school administrators – be it material related to specific topics, or more general items on raising the efficiency of the school office.

If you are interested please email me details of your proposed book including:

  1. Book title – provisional – and proposed length
  2. Sample pages – 5 to 10 pages to give us a feel for your style
  3. Contents page
  4. A brief summary of the proposed book saying whom it is aimed at (age level, subject area, etc), and any thoughts you have on why this book will be wanted by teachers.
  5. The market for your book.

Once we get your email we’ll get back to you very shortly, and if we are able to take the book we’ll send you a contract.

You can see the full list of current First and Best publications on www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk For more information for authors please go to http://www.firstandbest.co.uk/authors.php

If you have any queries please call 01536 399 000 and ask for the New Authors Department.

Anne Cockburn
Senior Editor

Raising Money for Secondary Schools

There are four ways in which secondary schools can increase the amount of money that they have to spend each year: by gaining additional support from parents, through donations from businesses, through income from sponsorship projects, and through efficiency savings.

Raising Money for Secondary Schools considers each of these approaches in turn and considers not only approaches that work, but also popular fund-raising methodologies that are often witnessed but are rarely successful.

Indeed, one of the big problems that schools can have with fund-raising is that many of the time-honoured methods of raising or saving money no longer work at all effectively.

When a school comes up against this issue and sees that the amount of money being raised or saved is in decline, there is sometimes a tendency simply to say, “fund-raising doesn’t work any more”. However, this explanation is generally not correct. Rather it is the case that the ways in which businesses and individuals respond to appeals for support have changed.

Further it is also true that what appears to be the common sense approach to gaining efficiency savings simply don’t work. Efficiency savings are possible, but for most schools this is only true when the school follows a particular approach.

This volume also asks the reader to focus on the position of the donor, and consider what sort of appeal will work. The reader is also encouraged to approach different types of organisations in different ways, rather than sending out identical emails and letters to all local companies, large and small.

There are also details of how the school should point out the benefits that will accrue to the donor, as well as to the school.

The volume concludes with a review of 22 separate sponsorship plans and a review of how efficiency savings can be made – often with savings that can be in excess of the amount of money that can be brought in through fund-raising.

Raising Money for Secondary School by Tony Attwood is available as a photocopiable book or on CD Rom which can itself be copied or loaded onto the school’s learning platform or intranet.

ISBN: 978 1 86083 801 9 Order code: T1801emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/education/T1801.pdf

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £26.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

Media Studies: an Introduction to the Terminology and Concepts

A major part of any Media Studies course is learning how to analyse or deconstruct media texts. For students new to Media Studies, the most difficult aspects of this are the terminology and concepts of the subject, many of which will be new to them or will have a slightly different meaning in the world of media.

This 119 page, photocopiable book will explain the terminology and concepts of the media to your GCSE students in simple terms and will provide them with a logical structure for evaluating media texts. The content of the book is applicable to both the English GCSE courses and examinations and the Scottish Standard Grade. Each chapter of Media Studies deals with a specific area of analytical inquiry: categories, language, narrative structure and conventions, representations, audience, institutional influences.

The book includes practical and theoretical exercises and an exemplar of an essay response to each area of inquiry. Frequent references are made to well-known media texts in order to clarify meanings.

Media Studies: an Introduction to the Terminology and Concepts by James Rigg; ISBN 978 1 86083 780 7.
Order code: T1685EMN. Sample pages may be viewed at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/media/T1685.pdf

Prices

  • Photocopiable book, £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £37.94 plus £3.95 delivery

Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

When ordering the book please quote the reference T1685EMN.