How to Explain Absolutely Anything to Absolutely Anyone: The art and science of teacher explanation Kindle Edition

A thoroughly readable and informative book on both the science and art of explaining concepts to students. A great reference to have for practical classroom ideas. Loved it!

This is an excellent book for teachers about the craft and science of teacher explanation. The author demonstrates his own understanding by making excellent use of the techniques he explains. For me, what makes this book stand out is the chapter on elaboration, which clearly explains how even the best explanations are of limited use if pupils don't have the chance to interpret their burgeoning understanding: this gives an essential context to the preceding ideas.I would recommend this to anyone (teacher or presenter) looking to improve their explanatory craft.

I’d have thought that the title was a bit OTT but no, it’s perfect. The book is full of concrete examples of how to create a narrative within the classroom, of how to make explanation the heart of any lesson. I’d recommend it to anyone that needs to convey information to anyone else on a daily basis, but ideal for teachers at any point of their career.

I thought many of the points raised were pretty obvious to me. However the author does go into a fair bit explaining each point in much more intricacy than I would, and I found some of the examples and references quite interesting to read. Also if anything, it kind of reinforced some of my pre-existing ideas about how kids learn in class, which means it sort of agrees with me (haha!), hence 3 stars.If you've been a home tutor or a school teacher or even just privately tutored other people's kids for free... if you even have some decent grasp of the basic psychology of people, or of how you yourself learn new things, you should have already realised some of these points on your own by now - if not, then maybe you're just not a very good natural teacher and I don't think this book alone would change you into a good teacher either - though it might improve you as a teacher. Also, I think the book does seem to place too much emphasis on a teacher as being vital to someone trying to learn something new. I'm not convinced that a teacher is always necessary, having been an autodidact myself all my life, but yes a good teacher is necessary if you're trying to make children learn certain things "for their own good" and not because they really are interested in them in the first place, which is the majority of school teaching.However, knowing how overworked my teacher friends are in state schools these days, I'm not quite sure they'd have the extra time (or are willing to use their extra time, if they have any) to do the extra reading and researching that the book recommends they do. The book advocates teaching scenarios in schools that sound ideal, but not particularly practical - not all teachers are good, not all teachers are willing to put in the work to improve, not all teachers have the time to do all that extra reading, researching and resource-sharing etc.

A fine guide on how to improve your explanations in class. Thorough, thoughtful and exceptionally clear - as you would expect! - it’s another powerful potential addition to any teacher’s library.

If you are a trainee this could be useful but after that it's a waste of time