The Lazy Teacher's Handbook

Jim Smith

Rating:

I can’t imagine any teacher wanting to be thought of as lazy and thus have a slight problem with the title, but there my problems end. This is an outstanding book, easily readable and ‘flick-through-able’ and jammed full of excellent ideas for outstanding teaching and learning.  

It offers simple and easy ideas (deemed as lazy!) for a huge range of daily teaching/ learning activities.  It suggests creative ways of getting pupils into, and working in, groups; of focussing on lesson outcomes; marking and assessment; use of IT; differentiation; SEAL; working with TAs; tutoring and some incredibly easy, yet challenging, lessons.  

Of course, not all the ideas are new, and you will no doubt have ‘I do that already’ moments, but there is so much here that will soon be part of what you do.  A particular favourite is a plenary involving asking the class to choose a letter and a number and then to write down the number of words starting with that letter related to that lesson, so 7 words starting with T related to sustainability for example.  Also high on my list is a class discussion over who would win in a fight between...... Winston Churchill and Barak Obama....... a test tube and a pipette.

As soon as you read one suggestion it sparks off variations in your mind. It’s the sort of book you could pick up and be using one of the ideas in your very next lesson.

Reviewer: Jocelyn Sumner, Partnership Director, University of Exeter, Devon (Former Head of RE at Teign School, Devon)

Review posted on: 23 April 2010

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