This is a must-read for anyone training to be a primary teacher or seriously thinking about teaching as a career. And if you lead a teacher- training course, it should be a strong contender for your reading list.

This book is the next best thing to taking a PGCE at the University of East Anglia, as all the contributions are by members of the course team.

But dip into it as you need. If you read it cover to cover, the prospect of mastering the enormous range of activities and expectations that primary teachers face daily could be overwhelming.

The 17 chapters give a clear picture of the skills and knowledge needed for the job. The first few focus on classroom observation, pupil motivation, assessment and planning, all of which are further developed in the later chapters on the core curriculum. Chapters end with useful summaries, issues for reflection and further reading.

Those considering teacher teaching are encouraged to gain as much voluntary school experience as possible.

Read alongside this first-hand experience, Teaching Children 3 to 11 will fill in a lot of the gaps, outlining the behind-the-scenes work needed to produce an apparently effortless performance in class.

The contributors are at their best illustrating their points with classroom examples. Rob Barnes does this particularly well in his section on techniques of questioning and managing pupil behaviour. Students should re-read his invaluable advice before every teaching practice.

The contributors work hard to provide more than a collection of tips and attempt to put the content into a broader context. They succeed in making brief links with theory, and useful advice is given on working with other adults in the classroom and on developing positive relationships with parents.

However, establishing an historical setting with talk of the 1967 Plowden Report and the William Tyndale “progressive education” controversy is beyond an introductory reader. Today’s concerns - such as multi-cultural education, the provision that schools make for pupils with English as a second language and the place of religious education - are not mentioned.

Mike Sullivan