What is the best way to take students from a predicted lower grade up to the achievement of an A* at GCSE?

When we brought out How to get A* in French we were asked if it was also available for Spanish – so now here it is.

As with the French version the author has analysed the writing and the speaking criteria of various exam boards and has come up with a simple and clear summary of these criteria written in a student friendly language. These criteria have been divided into four sections; each section corresponding to a GCSE level while at the end of the booklet students can find a very useful list of recommended idioms and high level expressions.

Additionally the booklet includes the conjugation of the 50 most used Spanish verbs, including the modal verbs, into different tenses.

This is followed by different language structures which the students can use to develop their writing.

The use of this booklet is proven to improve students’ levels not only in writing and speaking, but also in listening and reading.

How to get A* in Spanish? is published as a download so that you can receive immediately a copy onto your computer which you can print out for colleagues and your students as often as you want.

There are sample pages from the book at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/authordownloadsamples/T1834samples.pdf and you can order it at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=814

The price is £10 plus VAT (the VAT can be reclaimed in most cases by the school).

How to get A* in Spanish? is published by First and Best in Education, part of the Hamilton House group. If you have any enquiries you can call 01536 399 011, or email sales@firstandbest.co.uk or write to us at First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct, Earlstrees Rd, Corby, Northants NN17 4HH.

The full range of First and Best books can be seen at www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk

First and Best in Education
Earlstrees Road
Corby
UK
NN17 4HH

Website: www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk
Email: sales@firstandbest.co.uk

Grabbing and holding attention is what it is all about. So how do we design items that do this?

In my last piece I reduced all advertising to three processes

1. Think how we are going to be informative, interesting and unusual
2. Think how we are grabbing and holding attention
3. Consider what we have got, and then work out the design and copywriting in terms of what the psychology of perception says.

I got to this conclusion after travelling through a series of articles which deal with the ways in which it is possible to get double or treble the response rate from each advert which you place via email, the post and on web sites. (If you want to go back and read the series from the start, just click here)

I suggested also that the common sense notion that we need to be shouting out our company name and our product name so people remember it doesn’t work. Common sense is wrong. For all the evidence clearly shows that we need to be informative, interesting and unusual.

We need to jerk the readers or viewers out of their current state and get them to think about what we want them to think about.

So the question is, what does this imply for the design and copywriting?

The first point to make is that the design and copywriting doesn’t come first. You can’t just write copy or come up with a design that looks nice before you have decided how the promotion is going to be unusual and different from all the thousands of other promotions that people see.

And we must also always remember that “looking good” isn’t enough. It might look good to you when you look at the resultant web page, email or brochure – but you are focussed on it, because it is your product.

What we actually have to do is use the design to grab the reader who is not very interested by the throat, and then hold on. Our question therefore becomes:

What sort of design grabs the reader’s attention so dramatically that he or she can’t stop looking?

Now, of course, we don’t know the state of mind of the reader. If the reader is already interested, then quite often simple illustrations will work. So if you are thinking about buying a sofa or a set of new office furniture, or a set of chemistry books to use with your A level class, you might well focus on the picture of a sofa, office desk or a page from the book.

But that is nowhere near enough for the person who might well buy from you, but isn’t actually thinking that way when your advert arrives. Yes, a nice picture might well get some recipients to think, “oh that look’s nice” or “oh that looks interesting”, but still many other potential customers will be lost along the way.

Instead, what you need to do is consider your sale from the point of view of the psychology of perception.

Now a fundamental finding of the psychology of perception is that it is much easier to grab that attention of the passing individual with a phrase or slogan than it is with a picture. Also we know that it requires a considerable amount of brainpower to switch between looking at a picture and reading text. The partially interested reader can get lost at this stage.

The problem is that lots and lots of firms have tried to find phrases or slogans, and the passing reader is inundated with phrases or slogans. So much so that they are now ignored.

Which brings us to a real problem. Pictures take far more brain power to decipher than words, and so although a picture can work where the individual gives lots of attention to the page, when we think of the casual recipient, he/she won’t be bothered.

But phrases and slogans have been done to death, and so most are also ignored. Consider what you might do if you are faced with “Simply the best”, for example. You’ve seen and heard it so often, it stops having any arresting qualities. It is a bit like “Often copied, never bettered”, and “20% discount!” They don’t work any more.

The same is true with pictures. Stock pictures just don’t work because they have been seen.

Now if you really can create a picture that goes way beyond being nice, attractive and interesting, and is genuinely arresting, so much so that it makes everyone who looks at it drop everything and stare open mouthed, then great. Use that picture.

But a regular picture won’t work. And the same is true of a headline or a phrase. Everyday won’t do.

Our approach is often to create unusual phrases and headlines to grab attention because we find these a lot more successful and a lot less expensive than the creation of unusual pictures and designs.

Further, because no one can be utterly certain that an advert will work first time around, we often need to experiment. If that experimentation means finding different phrases or words, then it is not too expensive. If it means taking lots of different pictures, that can send the costs up dramatically.

So we will work with phrases such as “a word is worth 10,000 pictures”. But, of course, if you have the budget to create a range of unusual pictures that really do gain attention, then you can approach the design issue that way.

However, if you choose the less costly way of grabbing attention through words, that doesn’t mean that you don’t use pictures at all. All we have been discussing here is the first point of grabbing attention. I’ll move on to the way the design can take the reader towards the sale in the next article.

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This is one of three regular blogs on advertising and marketing produced by Hamilton House. If you would like to know more about what Hamilton House does please do have a meander around our web site or call us on 01536 399 000. If you want to subscribe free of charge to any of our newsletters there are details here.

And do remember: the unknown will always be boundless.

Tony Attwood
Tony@hamilton-house.com

 

We tend to think of the school as being a fixed entity
with established buildings, and designated
teaching areas. But…

Teaching and learning can and does happen anywhere; in the classroom, the hall, the playground… Indeed the only thing that ever limits the use of any space is our ability to imagine the possibilities.

So if you have a playground, and it is raining, or there is strong direct sunlight, or it is very windy, the area’s use as a teaching and learning environment might be thought to be restricted.

But if you were to put up a canopy, you could, for a very modest sum, give yourself an extended classroom, an al fresco dining area, an adventure play area…

This is the route down which numerous schools have recently gone, in developing ever more varied use of their facilities. And there really is no limit to the ways in which an area could be used.

True, there’s no telling what the British weather is going to do next, but the fact that canopies can be used in so many ways, means that there are virtually no days at all in the school year when such a facility cannot be used in some way or other.

There are over 150 different designs of canopies available. Some of course are designed for very specific purposes, such as the bicycle shed, but many others do have multiple uses.

Which is why before we do anything else, we always offer to come to your school, without cost and without any obligation, to see the site and discuss the ways in which a canopy could be added to your existing buildings.

To get an idea of the huge range of options available we’ve collected together photographs of over 30 different installations that we’ve undertaken recently. They are on

http://www.cambridgestylecanopies.co.uk/canopies.php – just click on any photograph that looks interesting and you will see it enlarged.

We’ve also got a separate page for cycle shelters http://www.cambridgestylecanopies.co.uk/cycle-shelters.php

If you’d like to discuss how a canopy could be used in your school, or have us come to look at your site and advise on the options, please either

Phone: 01353 699009
Email: office@cambridgestyle.org
Or write to: Cambridge Style Canopies, 62 Main Street, Pymoor, Ely, Cambs CB6 2DY

This 130 page volume presents rhythm, harmony and melody as separate sets of activities which can be incorporated into lessons of any length. Each lesson plan sets out the purpose of that lesson, the materials needed, the method employed and the tasks to be done.

Activities are supported by specially composed short practice segments covering a range of styles, for example rock, reggae, jazz and funk.

Each activity and its accompanying music includes easier and more advanced elements for classes with a range of abilities.

The CD illustrates the text and provides accompanying music for student tasks with at least one CD track for each lesson. Students are guided through scores and lines of music, encouraged to get a feel for the flow of the piece and to sing or play at every opportunity.

An early example from the volume contains explanations and musical examples to show how the 8^th note of a major scale becomes the first note of the next octave. Examples are generated and then joined together as a song.

By the middle of the volume, in Lesson 27, students progress from block harmonies into the harmonies that can occur in a free flowing song – in this case a round. The CD contains a recording of the round, which consists of eight two bar segments, each of which can be introduced at two bar intervals.

You can see the presentation of this lesson by clicking here.

Towards the end students combine everything learned about rhythm, harmony and melody into a series of pieces for which the music is provided.

Details of how to order are given below. The format of the book is a Ringbinder plus CD. The price is £34.95 plus £3.95 delivery.

• Publisher’s catalogue number T1614emn
• ISBN: 978 1 86083 603 9

Methods of ordering – please quote catalogue number T1614emn

• By post to First and Best, Hamilton House Mailings plc, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Rd., Corby, Northants NN17 4HH
• By fax on 01536 399 012
• By phone with a credit card or with an official school order number on 01536 399 011
• By email to sales@firstandbest.co.uk
• On line with a credit card at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=36&products_id=448