If you buy only one book on metacognitive strategies for the last ten minutes of the
lesson this year, make it this one!
The Book of Plenary is the first in Phil Beadle's 'How to Teach' series, in which he examines - in detail - every aspect of the modern classroom. The first half of this volume gives interested teachers a series of easy-to-set-up activities that make plenaries engaging and worthwhile.
The second half is a detailed and almost serious examination of metacognition in the classroom. It seeks to give teachers the stimulus to prepare and research plenaries fully so that they actively seek to develop the metacognitive experience, knowledge and self regulation of students. Distanced from glib 'learn-to-learn' programmes, this book engages with available research about metacognition and presents its relevance to the classroom in a lively, although sometimes childish, manner.
Phil Beadle is an English teacher and a former National Teaching Awards United Kingdom Secondary Teacher of the Year. He has also won two Royal Television Society Awards - for Channel 4's The Unteachables and Can't Read Can't Write. He is the editor/author of the 'How to Teach' series, a series of books which cover every element of classroom practice in a highly practical, but wildly irreverent, manner.