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Gervase Phinn

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Reading Matters! Reading Matters!

Reading Matters!

Touches of Beauty


Reading Matters

Some suggestions for selecting and teaching texts in The Literacy Hour

Reading Matters - book cover

Professor Gervase Phinn is a graduate of The University of Leeds, holds two Certificates in Education with distinction, a masters degree from The University of Sheffield and diplomas in Language Development and in Speech and Drama. He taught in a range of schools for fourteen years before becoming General Adviser for Language Development with Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. In 1988 he was appointed Senior General Inspector/Adviser for English and Drama with North Yorkshire County Council and later became Principal Adviser for the County. He is now a freelance lecturer and writer. A consultant for The Open University course, Learning for Diversity, The Poetry Society and The Schools Curriculum and Assessment Council, he has for some twenty five years been a regular contributor to a variety of D.E.S., D.F.E. and O.F.S.T.E.D. courses and conferences and lectured widely in this country and abroad. Gervase Phinn is a Registered Inspector with O.F.S.T.E.D., trained to inspect primary, special and secondary schools and is Fellow and Visiting Professor of Education at The University of Teesside. He has published many articles in periodicals such as The Use of English, English in Education, The Times Educational Supplement, Spoken English, Remedial Education, The Art and Craft Magazine, Primary English, The Primary English Magazine, Language and Learning, Dance and Drama, The International Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, The Yorkshire Dales Magazine and The Dalesman. He has contributed chapters to a range of academic texts including : Choosing Books for Young Readers in The Reading for Real Handbook (Kentledge) and Fiction in the Classroom in The English Teacher's Handbook (Hutchinson). His books on the teaching of fiction and poetry, The Vital Resource, Touches of Beauty and Habituated to the Vast have recently been reprinted. Gervase Phinn has contributed poems, stories and plays to many anthologies and has edited a number of text books including Five Themes for English (Longman), Sweet and Sour, Stage Write and Right on Cue (Collins) and Lizard Over Ice and The Turning Tide (Thomas Nelson). Additionally he has published collections of his own plays and stories and recently his anthology of poems, Classroom Creatures, has been reprinted. In March, 1998 his bestselling autobiographical novel The Other Side of the Dale was published by Michael Joseph and appeared as a Penguin paperback the following year. The sequel, Over Hill and Dale will appear in hardback in April, 2000. Television and radio appearances include: Esther (BBC2), Midweek (Radio 4), North East Tonight, (Tyne Tees Television), The BBC World Service, The Heaven and Earth Show (BBC2) and Just One Chance (BBC2). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he has a particular interest in children's reading and is widely know as a lively and entertaining speaker. He is married with four grown up children.

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Touches of Beauty

Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

Touches of Beauty - book cover
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