Classical Civilisations Summer School 2016

The Classical Civilisations Summer School offers an exciting opportunity for students to explore the history, literature, material culture, philosophy, and international relations of ancient Greece and Rome.

The thinkers, fighters, rulers and poets of the classical period have all had a profound and transformative impact on Western culture – many of their names and ideas are commonplace and familiar even today, but the reality of their worldviews and their day-to-day lives is often surprisingly alien. For over 2000 years of Western history, each generation has rediscovered, reinterpreted, and made its own use of the classical legacy, which has proved an endlessly fertile source of inspiration and intellectual challenge.

On this course we will sample a wide variety of areas of study, all the time considering the strong links between the ancient and the contemporary. We will always look for ways in which we can engage actively with the ideas and institutions of the past – with a mock Roman senatorial session, for instance, to discuss the fate of Carthage, or a practical workshop on the art of rhetoric in the ancient courts of law.

See a full schedule, details of tutors, student feedback from related courses and available dates at http://www.debatechamber.com/summerschools/classical-civilisations-summer-school/ 

Our approach to tuition is varied – offering interactive discussions, formal debates, lectures, group presentations, and close individual reading of primary and secondary source material. Special emphasis is given to developing students skills as critical readers at an undergraduate level, by analysing extracts and quotations, as well as images, material sources, and oral accounts.

Please note that students do not need to have studied any Greek or Latin to take part in this Summer School – all sources will be studied in translation.

Practical Details:

The cost of the five-day course is £465, and it will be held at the University of London Union in Bloomsbury on the 22nd-26th August 2016 – please check the website for current availability. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

There will be a limited number of bursary spaces available for those who would otherwise have financial difficulty in attending – please see our website for details.

To book a place please visit http://www.debatechamber.com/summerschools/classical-civilisations-summer-school/.  

 

An Interactive FOOD TECHNOLOGY Software Free Trial Offer, At An Unmissable Price. No School Should Miss Out On This. It Is Simply Unbelievable!

This offer for ALL 8 titles is packed with hundreds of stunning curriculum 3D animations describing difficult to understand concepts for FOOD TECHNOLOGY, text, voice-overs, quiz zones, drag and drops, multiple choice quizzes and more.

Includes a full school site PC and network licence, nothing more to pay EVER! Free 14-day trial , so if you don’t like it you can just send it back. All 8 of these individual great titles are included in the pack for just £100 for everything:

Contamination of Food; Functional Properties Of Food; Keeping Food Safe 1; Keeping Food Safe 2; Labelling; Packaging; Safe Working Environment 1; Safe Working Environment 2

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Now isn’t that truly staggering value for money for all these titles from the UK’s leading curriculum software supplier? Let’s beat the cuts!

To order your free trial please click here

 

What is the most effective way of helping all students become effective writers?

One of the most curious things about learning to write in one’s native tongue is that at the same time as learning to use the language one is actually using the language.

Which is why the learning tends to be twofold. On the one hand one learns the rules and logic of the language in a systematic way, but on the other hand issues suddenly arise that show that further explanation is needed.

For example, we might take the old favourite of homographs and homophones. They can cause endless confusion, so what should one do?

The answer, of course, is to have a lesson or a part of the lesson on this particular topic – quite possibly throwing in some homograph and homophone puns along the way just to make it more lighthearted.

The same is true with every other part of the language. From the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive mood to the use of a comma with adverbials of frequency.

This is what the 200 page copiable volume “Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stages 3 and 4″ covers. Over 170 different items and topics, each dealt with, along with examples.  It offers teachers invaluable assistance in familiarising their pupils with those grammatical and punctuation principles relevant to Key Stages 3 and 4 and rooted in national literacy strategies.

In this way Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stages 3 and 4 performs a dual function: it is both a grammar book and an editing handbook, utilising authentic examples collected from a variety of written sources.

It pays particular attention to those areas with which authors of all ages tend to have difficulties and offers an abundance of examples of current usage highlighting these areas.

Such examples are then followed by suggested improvements and by explanations justifying those improvements. Finally the relevant principles are practised through activities designed for pupils.

Anna Nolan, the author of Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stages 3 and 4, has spent many years running public examinations, developing national qualification, carrying out linguistic research and writing books on English grammar, punctuation and usage.

This copiable book is available both in spiral bound printed form and on CD.  It is a revised and updated second edition of the book Grammar and Punctuation at Key Stage 3.

There is a sample chapter available on-line at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/english/T1844.pdf

Cat No: 978 1 86083 867 5;  Publisher reference no: T1844emn

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 book…

Our mission to relieve the pressure from teachers that illness exerts

Theoretically, as a teacher you are more likely to be off work for illness than employees of most other professions due to the high number of children that you encounter on a daily basis.

Yet the DfE reports that teachers take an average of just 7.9 days off each year – similar to the average number of days taken by employees from across all sectors, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

It is thought that the presence of a culture of fear in schools often prevents teachers from taking the time off that they need when they are ill, but perhaps greater than this is the pressure that teachers put on themselves to get back to teaching before they’re ready.

With this in mind we’ve produced The Absent German Teacher Worksheet Series.

So if you are ill, at least you know that your students will always have work to do – which will hopefully relieve the pressure a little bit.

The worksheets within the volume cover a wide range of topics and range of ability – and are all designed so that they can be used as a one-off in an emergency, or as a series of highly varied tasks over a number of days, should the absence be unexpectedly protracted.

Activities range from a discussion about what happened to Berlin after the Second World War, to completing a Wordsearch revolving around the topic of Oktoberfest (for example).

Each topic area is followed by a wide range of questions, an extension task through which the students are required to translate a passage into German, and a homework task in which they have to write ten short sentences in English and translate as much of each sentence as they can into German using a dictionary.

The volume aims to increase your students’ knowledge of Germany, covering topics such as, Oktoberfest, Albert Einstein, Munich, the Berlin wall, Volkswagen Beetle, facts about Germany, etc. etc.

You can order The Absent German Teacher Worksheet Series online as a download for £10 by visiting http://www.absent-teacher.com/eworkbooks.html

If you quote HH10% into the message box when you make your purchase on PayPal, you will receive a 10% refund on your order.

What makes a play suitable for use in GCSE Drama?

The English language is full of plays – which is not surprising really since people have been writing them for around 1000 years.

The trouble is that many have cast requirements or subject matter that mean they are not at all suitable for the classroom or theatre with the right amount of engagement per candidate and the right number of students involved within the cast.

What’s more, given the need to find scenes and settings which are not just extracts from published plays and the need for the play to have a unified sense, finding suitable plays gets even more difficult – especially if one wishes to avoid using the same plays as last year.

This is the problem that “Here comes Godot now!” by Lindsay Jones solves. It contains 12 plays that engage with themes not often found in other sources, such as dark comedy, fantasy, horror, humour and urban myths.

Thus the themes in this volume avoid some of the social topics such as drug taking which other volumes (and indeed assemblies and PSHE lessons) will already have covered extensively and looks instead at more difficult topics such as FMG, death, child sexual abuse, and social class.

As for performances, the plays are written for a variety of combinations of participants from two boys or two girls up to four boys and four girls.

Because the volume is photocopiable (or printable from a CD rom) only one copy of the book need be bought, and it can be used among the class without further cost.

ISBN: 978 1 86083 856 9 Order code: T1820emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages incorporating one complete play can be viewed at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/drama/T1820.pdf

  • Photocopiable book, £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the book and the CD £36.94 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report…

How easy is it to recognise the symptoms of anorexia or bulimia?

How would you help a child who develops one of these illnesses? Would you be sympathetic to a mental illness or would you take the view that the child was being silly and irresponsible.

Today’s children are far more obsessed with body image than previous generations. Many of their role models are excessively thin, and for some being thin becomes equated with success and popularity. Dieting is not unusual among teenagers and it is terribly easy to carry it too far. It is not so easy to recover without a lot of support and understanding. Anorexia and bulimia are addictive illnesses in which the sufferer lies and conceals to attempt to cover up the addiction. There is a large amount of self-deception as the sufferer may see a fat person in the mirror even although those around him/her see an emaciated one. The sufferer does not want help as he/she is terrified of becoming fat.

This book was written by someone who herself suffered both anorexia and bulimia for sixteen years. It describes in detail how she damaged her health and jeopardised her family relationships and friendships through an illness to which she was not willing to admit. It also describes her struggle back to normal healthy eating. The latter sections of the book give practical advice for normal healthy eating and describe the physical side effects of not having a healthy diet.

If you would like to see sample pages please email sales@firstandbest.co.uk

Publisher’s reference: T1564EMN ISBN: 978 1 86083 655 8

Prices

  • Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £15.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • CD with school-wide rights: £15.95 plus £3.95 delivery
  • Both the Ring Binder and the CD £21.94 plus £3.95 delivery

Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report… please quote the order ref: T1564EMN

Five steps to providing support for your midday supervisor/s

Following conversations with midday supervisors, playtime expert Therese Hoyle identified that they don’t feel as valued and supported within their school’s community as they would like. In response to this she has devised a list of ways that you can provide support for your midday supervisors.

Firstly, by including photos of the lunchtime team and articles about playtime initiatives in the school’s newsletter, parents will see that your midday supervisors are highly influential in their child’s development, and you will give them greater status within the school and community.

Secondly, and similarly, these same outcomes can be achieved by including the names and photos of your lunchtime team, together with the rest of the school staff, on the welcome board and/or school website.

Another way that you can provide support for your midday supervisors is by providing them with the means to reward children in the playground when they are behaving well. This makes playtimes a positive experience for children and supervisors alike, as well as helping supervisors gain the respect from pupils that they deserve.

To implement this, Therese Hoyle recommends using reward stickers, pads, tokens, and certificates from Edventure. These can be found at www.edventure.co.uk/search/reward.

Additionally, implementing the PLACE model will ensure that midday supervisors can build positive relationships with your pupils through positive encounters. PLACE stands for Playful, Loving, Accepting, Curious and Empathetic.

Lastly, by ensuring that you communicate any changes to incentive and sanction systems with your midday supervisors, they will be able to carry out their roles and responsibilities more effectively, particularly with regard to behaviour management in the playground.

You can find the full article, and other similar articles, in the Edventure catalogue. If the catalogue hasn’t arrived in your school yet, please do click here, enter your details, and we’ll get (another) one in the post to you right away.

What’s more, if you are interested in joining in with Positive Play Week (9 -13 May 2016), you can find more information, including what it entails and how your school can get involved, by visiting www.positiveplayweek.co.uk.

And as always, you can place an order with Edventure in a variety of ways, including:

  • on the website www.edventure.co.uk
  • by faxing us to 01323 50 10 41
  • by calling us on 01323 50 10 40
  • by emailing us at sales@edventure.co.uk      
  • by post to Edventure Ltd, Hargreaves Business Park, Hargreaves Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QW.

If you quote HH0515 on your order delivery will be free. Without quoting the code the charge is £3.95.

How can you overcome the overwhelming number of obstacles to LOtC?

Because LOtC offers so many benefits, most educators would like to spend more time teaching their students outside the typical classroom setting. However, many can’t offer LOtC to their students as often as they would like because of the various obstacles in the way.

Just one of these obstacles is the issue of school transport – and, more specifically, the bureaucracy, legalities, paperwork, and costs that come with acquiring a school minibus (reported to be the most desired LOtC transport option).

Which is why, as a company which supplies school minibuses, we are sponsoring LOtC Week – to support schools in overcoming at least one of the obstacles to offering regular LOtC, in the hope that your students will be able to enjoy more LOtC in the future.

As sponsors of LOtC Week we have put together a wealth of information on acquiring a school minibus (including information about the practicalities, legalities, paperwork, and costs involved) which is easy to navigate and even easier to understand:

  1. Who can drive
  2. Operator’s Licence – what types are there and do you need one?
  3. Seatbelts – the rules
  4. Taking a minibus abroad
  5. Towing with a minibus
  6. Tachographs – what are they and do you need one?
  7. Signage for School minibuses
  8. Safety inspections and MOT’s – what are the rules and recommendations?
  9. Driver training
  10. Additional reading and information sources

To see this information all in one place, please do visit www.learningoutside.info.

On the LOtC Week website (www.learningoutside.info) you will also find information on the benefits of LOtC, as well as how your school can get involved with LOtC Week which is set to take place between 27th June and 1st July 2016.

Furthermore, the team here at Benchmark Leasing have for some time been working hard to create the most convenient minibus leasing packages especially for schools – evolving the arrangement through feedback, primarily from administrators and school managers.

To see these minibus leasing packages, please do visit www.minibusleasing.co.uk or call us on 01753 859944.