The ‘Spell Binding’ series. The first, for infants (KS1) was published in 2018 and at last the third book, for the upper juniors is finished!

The gang together at last! I’ve been working on the ‘Spell Binding’ books on and off for around ten years. The idea of the books is to support teachers by providing stories, sketches and poems, along with lesson support, to make the teaching spelling more creative, innovative – and fun!  Between them all the pieces cover all the requirements for learning spelling stipulated in the National Curriculum for England, though the books should support any curriculum dealing with the excentricities of English spelling and also people learning English as a second language. Please feel free to pester your local Primary School!

It’s taken a while but several buses have arrived at once!

For a long time I’ve been working on creating stories, sketches and poems for a second book of ‘Spell Binding Stories’ following the edition for KS1 (age 5-7.) This book is aimed at ‘lower’ KS2, in other words children aged around 7-9, to support the teaching and learning of spelling as required at these ages by the National Curriculum. The pieces are all as different from each other as possible, including a sketch based on a TV show entitled ‘There’s no tricks with a suffix’, a story in the added ‘grammar supplement’ exploring what happens when all the verbs are stolen, an ‘adverb miner’ descrining what happens down an ‘adverb mine’ and a story explaining why we don’t have the word inspirebloopbloop!

Also available on Kindle!

I thought I had published ‘The Gobulins and the Globulins’, containing John Welding’s wonderful illustrations, on kindle as well as in paperback but while I was sorting out the publication of ‘Spell Binding Stories’ I noticed that I hadn’t completed the process – so I did! One wonderful advantage in ‘Gobulins’ being published in Kindle, over the paperback publication, is that the illustrations of John’s that were in colour are available in colour, whereas they are only in black and white in the paperback. ‘Gobulins’ involves the discovery by the narrator of the book discovering the last tribes of two very unusual beings in the overgrown garden of his uncle’s cottage in Wales. The only problem is their continuing existance is in grave danger!

We all love straight line graphs don’t we! Don’t we… ? Well even if you don’t now maybe you will love them more after watching my poem based on the formula of straight line graphs – y = mx + C… How great can an equation be?

Richard, who kindly manages my website, has added a link on the home page to ‘An Awfully Big Blog Adventure’. This is a blog written by children’s writers. We all have a set day of the month to contribute – my day is the 2nd. So if you navigate to that page you’ll be able to read pieces written by around thirty authors including me. I hope you enjoy the blogs should you look at them. Of course ‘An Awfully Big Blog Adventure’ more or less abreviates as ABBA so I often surprise friends and family by declaring that I’m a member of ABBA! How exciting that ABBA have reformed… without me though apparently!

New for the New Year! Two new books!

The first is ‘The Gobulins and the Globulins’.

The second book is, ‘Spy by Accident’.

Simon doesn’t know it but his mum is a spy. Up until now she has been able to keep her dangerous job a secret from Simon and his father Andrew. When Simon gets home early from school he and his dad unwittingly become entangled in her dangerous world.

A poem from ‘Escape from Schoolditz’ is now available on YouTube; the link is;

I hope you enjoy it… on average!

Also after being offline for a while www.counton.org is back online – check out my cartoon about numbers at…

https://www.counton.org/explorer/wise-wizz-of-woo/sound/

A selection of maths stories at…

https://www.counton.org/explorer/mathstories/

… and a couple of interactive adventures at…

https://www.counton.org/mathsmysteries/

I hope you enjoy them!

As the Head teacher locked Toni and her colleagues into the staffroom for the night, Toni wondered about all her friends at college who hadn’t gone into teaching. Were they still enjoying life in the outside world? Did they have the chance to bring up their own families? Toni had realised long ago that it would be impossible for her to combine parenthood with the imprisonment of teaching. “Your students are your family now!” the Head teacher had declared when she’d once dared to complain.

Like all mere teachers Toni and her three colleagues are locked in their staffroom at night, until either the Head teacher or the Deputy Head releases them in the morning. Inspired by the escape attempts of Colditz the four teachers attempt to get away and lead a normal life. Unfortunately the Deputy Head is becoming increasingly suspicious that something is going on…

A story for adults and children… oh and even teachers.

Now available from Amazon in book or Kindle form!

This is a series of stories and poems I’ve been working at on and off for several years – and at last they seemed ready to publish! There are just over thirty pieces each matching one of the spelling skill children are supposed to learn as specified in the National Curriculum for English in England. Hopefully the stories and poems (and the teacher’s notes that come with them) will provide an additional route to teaching spelling that allows more diversity, creativity – and most importantly FUN!!! I believe all learning should be stimulating and particularly for children that means it should be fun! If you get to look at them or use them I hope you enjoy them – all supportive criticism and feedback always appreciated!

The link for the book version (available from Amazon in any country) is;

And this is the link for the kindle version…

I’ve used this poem to help students I’ve taught learn the essentials of calculating bearings, so I thought it might make sense to publish it as a video in case it could help anyone else – please let me know if it does!

I hope you enjoy it shipmates!

These two poems about giants come from ‘Every Phoneme Covered’ a teacher’s handbook to support the teaching of phonics using stories and poems. I hope you like them – and that it’ll make you think about putting a giant in a cage!

This is a poem I wrote hoping to make flat two-dimensional shapes easier to remember. I hope you enjoy it – and that you remember it!