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Tony Attwood Biblography

 

This is not a comprehensive list of all the books by Tony Attwood but it contains quite a few of the more interesting items..  The aim is to have a line or two of information on all the books listed.  We just haven't got there yet.  

 

Where no publisher is indicated, the book is published by First and Best Education Ltd (see www.firstandbest.co.uk for more information).

 

  1. 600 Activities for A-Level General Studies.  This came about when one of Tony's daughters was doing this subject, and reporting that the teacher really had not too much idea how to run the course.  The book is a complete 2 year programme based on the students doing their own research.   Continually popular it seems to me a real need.
  2. ADD and the Under Fives.  It seems hard to believe that the Under 5s can have ADD, but that is what some parents and playgroup leaders think, and this is a summary of the ways people have of dealing with the situation.
  3. Afterlife – see Blake’s 7 Afterlife
  4. Attention Deficit Disorder: Practical Activities in School.   This book and the title below, work as a pair, allowing the school and the parent to follow the same pattern of behaviour and same approach to handling ADD.  The theory is that if both environments work in the same way, results come much more quickly.
  5. Attention Deficit Disorder: The Parents’ Support Book
  6. Behaviour & Discipline in Primary Schools.  One of the classic texts on the whole school approach to discipline and behaviour - presented as a photocopiable book so all teachers can understand the background and buy in to the unified approach.
  7. Blake’s 7 – Afterlife (Virgin, originally WH Allen / Star) - the novel commissioned by Terry Nation to continue the story of Blake's 7 after episode 52.  The fans hated it, but it sold world wide and marked the official explanation of why Avon shot Blake.
  8. Blake’s 7: The Programme Guide (Virgin, originally WH Allen / Star) - the official guide to the BBC TV series, with interviews, photos, plot lines and the like.
  9. Business Rip Offs and How to Avoid Them – Kogan Page 1987
  10. Business Sponsorship of Primary & Middle Schools 
  11. Business Sponsorship of Secondary Schools
  12. Buying for Business – Kogan Page 1988
  13. Careerscope Series - a series of 20 careers books published under the Careerscope name in the late 1970s and early 1980s
  14. Discipline & Behaviour
  15. Dyscalculia in Schools 
  16. Education Marketing.  The classic and definitive business paperback on how to sell to parents and teachers via the mail. 
  17. Enhancing Learning in Homework Clubs
  18. Enterprise Education.  A complete volume of information and activities for secondary school students in England who have to follow the Enterprise course introduced in 2005.
  19. Football Workbook with Paul Farmer (Edward Arnold) .  A follow up to the hugely successful Pop Workbook - an attempt to expand the concept of the Pop Workbook.
  20. From Failure to Excellence.  The second book in the School Improvement Report series which developed the themes first expounded in The Improving Department.  Published as a primary school edition, and as a secondary school edition.
  21. Geography Department Management Policies
  22. Getting Jobs in Music: Cassell 1989
  23. Ghengis Khan meets the Royal Mail 1992 .   The last edition of a booklet that sent parts of the direct mail industry into fits of outrage, leading eventually to the demand that this edition was withdrawn.  Fascinating if for nothing else than the levels the direct mail industry would go even at this stage to keep Tony quiet.
  24. Good Franchise Guide – with Len Hough 1988 1990
  25. Head of Physics Survival Guide
  26. How to Choose a Private School – Northcote House 1989
  27. Improving Attitudes, Managing Behaviour & Reducing Exclusions
  28. Improving Children’s Learning
  29. Improving the Efficiency of School Admin.   Following the writing of the complete Certificate in Educational Administration course Tony wrote this report for bursars which focuses on the way in which schools can transform the efficiency of their administration.  It is probably fair to say this report came like a bolt from the blue - most schools had simply never looked at their administration before in this way.
  30. In Concert (Trottman Associates) - school textbook using the music industry as a basis for teaching social studies.
  31. Key Skills:  Communication Level 3
  32. Leisure and recreation - vocational A level.  A book that covers the course, but with a few unexpected twists which tend to generate an extra level of interest among the students.
  33. Lifescope Series - follow up to the Careerscope series looking at more unusual jobs.
  34. Listening to Music for GCSE
  35. Literacy Skills and Self Development
  36. Marketing to Schools: Everything You Need to Know
  37. Maths for the Dyscalculic Pupil - shapes, percentages and fractions. The latest book in the series, which now allows teachers to proceed from the very basics of addition to the more complex arena of fractions with dyscalculic pupils.
  38. Methods of Teaching
  39. Methods of Teaching Maths
  40. Methods of Teaching Maths to Pupils with Dyscalculia.  The book that defined the way forward with dyscalculia, building on the roots of the problem.  Following the thesis that the way to teach dyscalculic pupils involves a return to the basic functions combined with a multi-sensory approach the book set out what has now become the standard approach to teaching children with severe maths disabilties.
  41. Music and the Media:  Year 9 Activities.  Music and the Media appeared on the Key Stage 3 syllabus without much warning, and with no published material to support the teacher.  This book covers the whole syllabus, and gives the teacher everything needed to cover the topic from start to finish.  Being unique it had a huge advantage, and is now to be found in the vast majority of key stage 3 schools.
  42. Music from Scratch (OUP) - a hugely successful title from the 1980s which was endlessly reprinted and became the definitive title in secondary school music education.  It had previously elicited the rudest rejection slip Tony ever got - "I strongly suggest you avoid wasting the time of publishers and actually find out how teachers working in schools currently teach music".
  43. Music: The Perfect Classroom
  44. Policy documents for day nurseries and nursery units.  The promotion for this book was the most successful that Tony ever produced - over 11% of all the nursery schools in the UK buying the book in response to the first mailing.   The total has now risen to around 50%.
  45. Policy Documents For Primary Schools
  46. Pop Songbooks (3 volumes) (OUP) - 3 volumes containing popular songs ("Yesterday", "Blowing in the Wind" etc etc) arranged for classroom instruments.  Endlessly reprinted, not least because of the range of hits included.
  47. Pop Workbook with Paul Farmer (Edward Arnold) - hugely popular in its day, this was the first ever book to take the pop industry as a basis for an educational project.  It seems a commonplace enough idea today, but at that time it was covered by every national newspaper in the country.  "My one appearance in the colour supplement of the Observer" says Tony.
  48. Practical Activities for Children with Dyscalculia.  The most popular of the dyscalculia series, this set of copiable resources allowed schools to undertake the work in the classroom and copy pages for parents to continue the work at home.
  49. Practical School Improvement in the Classroom
  50. PSHE in the Playground.  Taking children's playground games as a base, this book sets out a series of activities that children can undertake under light direction from staff, in order to learn and understand the issues of working alone, co-operation, leadership, social groups, friendship, relationships etc.
  51. Raising Grades at GCSE
  52. Raising Grades Through Study Skills - a photocopiable report now used in almost every school in the UK.  It took the simple notion that by undertaking a small amount of study skills work each week it was possible to raise the grades students and pupils got at their exams.  The argument was that most children and teenagers were never taught how to learn.   For most schools using the book it was a revelation - a simple step into higher grades through just one book.
  53. Raising Response Rates in Direct Mail
  54. Raising Teacher Morale in a World of Change.  It is curious that so few publications on teacher morale have been published, and yet it is self-evident in any school that some teachers are motivated and have high morale, while others are utterly dispirited.  High morale leads to better teacher and learning, and this book shows how.
  55. Realising the Potential of each department
  56. Recovery From Stress:  A School Manager's Guide to Helping Colleagues
  57. Risk Assessment Documents for Secondary Schools.  School were slow at developing risk assessment programmes, and this was just about the first volume that gave schools a set of templates from which they could work.
  58. School Health and Safety Policy Documents 
  59. Secondary Home/School Policies & Contracts.  Schools suffered greatly when parents started to consider them suppliers of a service, and this forced schools into a world in which they were forced to define the relationship between themselves and parents.  This book set out the templates for schools to use.
  60. Security in Schools – What you can do.  Based on some fairly simple government advice this volume took the whole problem of vandalism, theft and arson, and considered ways of stopping it.  It was probably the first volume to point out the dangers of "target hardening" to schools, and to advocate less obvious solutions.
  61. Self Development & Secondary School Pupils
  62. Setting Targets to Raise Standards
  63. Starting a Franchise – Daily Mail 1990  
  64. Tamburlane – the Mad Hen – with Adrian Mitchell 1971  Heinemann   - Tony wrote the music, Adrian Mitchell the lyrics to this children's musical based very loosely on the life of Tamburlane the Great.  Performed in thousands of schools over the years, although sadly now out of print.
  65. Teacher Motivation
  66. Teenagers, Their Discipline and Behaviour.  An incredibly popular title which was sold to secondary schools with a licence to photocopy the text and pass it on to parents.   It is estimated that over 250,000 copies of the text have been distributed in this way.
  67. Tests for Dyscalculia.  One of the dyscalculia series - this one allows teachers to establish rapidly and without recourse to a psychologist - exactly where a child's problems with maths lie - and indeed how they can be treated.
  68. The Bursar's Survival Guide
  69. The Effective Department
  70. The Effective Year Leader
  71. The Headteacher as Leader
  72. The Improving Department.   If Music from Scratch defined secondary school classroom music for 20 years, The Improving Department defined the way in which practical school improvement could work.  While academics were suggesting that hit teams of professionals were needed to go into failing schools and sort out the mess, Tony suggested that it could be done from within - if only the school was organised in a specific way.
  73. The Key to Time.  One of a series of books on dyscalculia which Tony wrote - this one focussing on time.  The idea is simple - time is the ultimate sequence from which all of us can never escape.  Dyscalculic students have trouble with sequences - which makes time the ideal way of helping these students overcome their problems.
  74. The Parents Survival Guide: Coping with a Teenager.  A book for schools to photocopy and give on to parents, its great advantage is that it advocates methods of dealing with difficult teenagers which can be applied both at home and at school. 
  75. The Parents' Survival Guide: Games to Play at Home
  76. The Parents Survival Guide: Helping your child be better behaved  
  77. The Parents Survival Guide: Helping your child with study skills.  Other volumes have dealt with study skills and its vital place in learning.  This is the only one that takes the message home, and encourages parents to work with their children on study skills issues. 
  78. The Parents Survival Guide: Preparing for School 
  79. The Perfect Primary School and How to Achieve It
  80. The Perfect Secondary School
  81. The Pop Buisness (E J Arnold) - a multi-media pack.
  82. The Relevant Assembly.  For each day in the school year a list of anniversaries are selected around which teachers can build assemblies based on relevant topics.  Both positive and negative events are mentioned, allowing a wide range of assemblies to be generated.  The book averages around five anniversaries a day, with commentaries on most of them.
  83. Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma (WH Allen, Star Paperbacks) - first in a short lived series of spin-offs from Doctor Who focussing on the companions.
  84. Using INSET to Raise Standards.  All schools have to do it, but few seem to link in-service training to the drive to higher standards.  This volume showed how it could be done.
  85. What Employers Want and Expect.  Just how to employers react to 16 and 18 year olds who join them straight from school.  This volume contained startling information for both teachers and their students.
  86. What’s New Guide to Transport Cafes 1982 - an eccentric if interesting guide to around 500 cafes in the UK.
  87. Work Experience. A volume that arose from the policy of Tony's company, Hamilton House, of accepting work experience pupils from local schools.  There had been a lot of frustration about the way schools handled the situation, and this book for teachers set out how schools can make the most of their work experience programmes.