Review:Jenny Mosley’s Top Tips for Calmer Classrooms and Puppet Scripts
We love Jenny Mosley and her Circle Time system at anseo.net! I love the positive and consistent approach to improving behaviour and have used it time and time again in my own teaching to complete success. Every class I have had has learned under her positive rewards and warning system and I have never had a troublesome class(by the end of the year!)
I own everything there is to own on the Jenny Mosley series and was really excited to be sent a couple of new publications from Positive Press, the publishing company that she publishes all her books under.
The first one I am going to look at is the Top Tips series. There are five titles in this series-Guided Visualisations, Calmer Classrooms, Rainstick visualisations, Midday supervisors and a Kitbag of Power.
The Top Tips books are all dinky at an A5 size and are basically a quick reference to the amazing things that Jenny is trying to help children and teachers with.
The Top Tips for Calmer Classrooms is snappy introduction to the Circle Time system. It would be suitable for a new teacher who wants a quick reference to how the Golden Time, Golden Rules and Circle Time system works. I would imagine that it would give a new teacher, starting out a great confidence in how to set the classroom up with a behavioural system that has been proven to work but also to set themselves up on their teaching career.
For more experienced teachers or teachers who have been using Jenny Mosley, this would be a revision for them and perhaps one they could copy and use for parents of other adults working in the classroom. It covers areas like being the calm teacher, the calming environment, calming golden rules, golden time, calming rituals, calming games, relaxation techniques and visualisations and some suggestions for other resources for a calm classroom. A great gift for a friend who may be going into teaching and at £5.99 or €7.40(xe.com), it is not going to break your bank!
The second Top Tips book that I have been sent is Using Puppet Scripts and it follows a similar format as above. A brief introduction to how to use puppet scripts and indeed, puppets but also gives some of the more integral scripts you might want to trial. The great thing about this book is that you can try out the idea of using a puppet script and then if you really find it works, you could purchase a more detailed book from positive press.
Check out www.circle-time.co.uk for a full catalogue and commit yourself to trying some of the positive ideas that Jenny has spent her life researching and writing about.
