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.
There has been a shake-up in the way children are taught to read in primary schools in England. The government has accepted a review that backs the use of a method known as 'synthetic phonics', where children are taught letter sounds (c-a-t spells cat), not the names of letters (cee-ay-tee), before they move onto simple books. Phonics is already used in a lot of schools, but not necessarily in a systematic or prescriptive way. These changes - which are being introduced at the end of 2007 - will mean that all children will be taught this way before the age of five.
Phonics: The Easy Way ties in to this new government literacy strategy and is a core guide to help you to teach your child to read using phonics. It follows the latest recommendations of the DFES and the Primary National Strategy, reflecting the new, fundamentally changed, teaching guidelines.
Phonics: The Easy Way includes: - Guidelines on teaching children the alphabet