Making Every English Lesson Count: Six principles to support great reading and writing (Making Every Lesson Count)

Making Every English Lesson Count: Six Principles to Support Great Reading and Writing goes in search of answers to the fundamental question that all English teachers must ask: 'What can I do to help my students to become confident and competent readers and writers?'

Writing in the practical, engaging style of the award-winning Making Every Lesson Count, Andy Tharby returns with an offering of gimmick-free advice that combines the time-honoured wisdom of excellent English teachers with the most useful evidence from cognitive science. The book is underpinned by six pedagogical principles challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning and provides simple, realistic classroom strategies to bring the teaching of conceptual knowledge, vocabulary and challenging literature to the foreground.

It also points a sceptical finger at the fashions and myths that have pervaded English teaching over the past decade or so such as the idea that English is a skills-based subject and the belief that students can make huge progress in a single lesson. Instead, Andy advocates an approach of artful repetition and consolidation and shows you how to help your students develop their reading and writing proficiency over time.

Making Every English Lesson Count is for new and experienced English teachers alike. It does not pretend to be a magic bullet. It does not claim to have all the answers. Rather the aim of the book is to provide effective strategies designed to help you to bring the six principles to life, with each chapter concluding in a series of questions to inspire reflective thought and help you relate the content to your classroom practice.

In an age of educational quick fixes, GCSE reform and ever-moving goalposts, this precise and timely addition to the Making Every Lesson Count series provides practical solutions to perennial problems and inspires a rich, challenging and evidence-informed approach to English teaching.

Suitable for English teachers of students aged 11 to 16 years

; Brings the teaching of conceptual knowledge, vocabulary and challenging literature to the foreground and shows teachers how to develop students' reading and writing proficiency over time.

Andy Tharby is a practising English teacher with nine years of classroom experience at a secondary school in West Sussex. He is also a research lead, with an interest in helping ordinary classroom teachers enhance their practice through engagement with a wider evidence base. He writes a well-regarded blog, Reflecting English, in which he covers a range of subjects from improving student writing to finding solutions to the problems and dilemmas faced by busy teachers.