Martin Griffin

ONE DETECTIVE. ONE MURDERER. BUT WHICH IS WHICH? 'Fresh, gripping and addictive! An absolute gem' ALLIE REYNOLDS 'If there is a finer crime debut this year, it will be a surprise' DAILY MAIL 'Clever and bold' LISA GARDNER 'The book everyone's going to be talking about' KAREN DIONNE 'A brilliant debut from an excellent new voice ' MY WEEKLY ________________ Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits. As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor: the prisoner his team was transporting. When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines. Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who. If the cold doesn't kill her, one of these men will get there first . . . ________________ What real readers are saying about The Second Stranger 'Plenty of heart-stopping moments, twists and turns. A fast-paced story, atmospheric, intriguing, with a great ending. I loved it' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I enjoyed the excellent descriptions of the hotel, weather and conditions . . . I felt every gust of wind and slammed door' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'A swiftly moving and menacing plot. The remote, atmospheric and unsettling backdrop make this eerie, chilling and unpredictable suspense' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'The suspense and drama build throughout . . . Very clever and unexpected' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I could not put it down. Would definitely recommend!' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

One detective. One murderer. But which is which?

The Second Stranger

Steve Oakes

A 30-item Toolkit for Anyone Learning Anything

The Student Mindset

The GCSE Mindset: 40 activities for transforming student commitment, motivation and productivity, written by Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin, offers a wealth of concrete, practical and applicable tools designed to supercharge GCSE students' resilience, positivity, organisation and determination. At a time when GCSE teaching can feel like a conveyor belt of micromanaged lessons and last-ditch interventions, Steve and Martin acclaimed authors of The A Level Mindset suggest a different approach, underpinned by their VESPA model of essential life skills: vision, effort, systems, practice and attitude. These five non-cognitive characteristics beat cognition hands down as predictors of academic success, and in The GCSE Mindset Steve and Martin take this simple model as their starting point and present a user-friendly month-by-month programme of activities, resources and strategies that will help students break through barriers, build resilience, better manage their workload and ultimately release their potential both in the classroom and beyond. The book's forty activities, while categorised thematically under the VESPA umbrella, have been sequenced chronologically by month in order to better chart the student's journey through the academic year and to help them navigate the psychological terrain ahead. Each activity can be delivered one-to-one, to a tutor group or to a whole cohort, has been designed to take fifteen to twenty minutes to complete, and has been written with a pupil audience in mind. However, to complement the tasks' practical utility, the authors also explore the underpinning research and theory including the pioneering work of Angela Duckworth, Dr Steve Bull and Carol Dweck in more detail in the introduction to each section. Informed by the authors' collective thirty-plus years of teaching and coaching, this essential handbook for GCSE success also suggests key coaching questions and interventions for use with pupils and includes expert guidance on how schools can implement and audit the core components and outcomes of the VESPA approach in their own settings. Additionally and indeed pertinently in the present educational environment where empirical data is valued so highly the book features a chapter dedicated to the measurement of mindset, written by guest contributors Dr Neil Dagnall and Dr Andrew Denovan from Manchester Metropolitan University. They present the twenty-eight-item VESPA questionnaire, which they helped Steve and Martin to design, and take the reader through the research process behind its origins before going on to describe how it can be used to identify areas for development and to measure the impact of interventions. Suitable for teachers, tutors and parents who want to boost 14 to 16-year-olds' academic outcomes and equip them with powerful tools and techniques in preparation for further education and employment

40 activities for transforming commitment, motivation and productivity

The GCSE Mindset

Jon Mayhew

Martin Griffin and Jon Mayhew's Storycraft: How to teach narrative writing is an inspiring and practical resource to support secondary school teachers in developing their students' creative writing. This book is not a style manual. Authors Martin Griffin and Jon Mayhew think there are plenty of those about. Instead, it picks apart the craft of narrative writing and equips teachers with activities designed to help their students overcome the difficulties they experience when tasked with creating something from nothing. Written by two fiction writers and English teachers with over forty years' combined experience in education, Storycraft packs in expert guidance relating to idea generation and the nature of story and provides off-the-peg writing prompts that teachers can immediately adopt and adapt in the classroom. The book breaks down the simple components that must be in place for a narrative to work the crafting of character, setting, shape and structure and shares fifty-one stimulating activities that will get students writing narratives regularly, more creatively and with greater confidence. Martin and Jon also include helpful advice in a chapter dedicated to the process of editing in which they provide activities designed to help students diagnose and improve misfiring narratives, and they close the book with invaluable tips for GCSE exam preparation written directly for students and with an impending creative writing exam in mind. Suitable for English teachers of students aged eleven to eighteen.

How to teach narrative writing

Storycraft

In The Student Mindset: A 30-item toolkit for anyone learning anything, Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin provide clear, effective and engaging tools designed to help students plan, organise and execute successful learning. Successful students find a way to succeed. They get the results they want. And they achieve this not by superior ability, but by sticking to habits, routines and strategies that deliver those results. By cutting through the noise surrounding academic success and character development, bestselling authors Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin have identified the five key traits and behaviours that all students need in order to achieve their goals: vision, effort, systems, practice and attitude (VESPA). These characteristics beat cognition hands down, and in The Student Mindset Steve and Martin provide a ready-made series of study strategies, approaches and tactics designed to nurture these qualities and transform your motivation, commitment and productivity. The book's thirty activities, while categorised thematically under the VESPA umbrella, have been organised around six key phases of learning so that you can recognise which phase you're in before choosing from the range of tools and techniques to help you get through it. The six co-existing key phases are: preparation; starting study; collecting and shaping; adapting, testing and performing; flow and feedback; and dealing with the dip. At each phase you'll experience challenges and discover new ways of working, and this book's activities have been designed to help you gain control and become a better learner by sharing workload management tactics and revision strategies associated with calm, purposeful study and ultimately getting good results. These tools include a range of effective prioritisation, stress reduction, procrastination-busting and mindset development approaches all neatly packaged into this outstanding practical guide to becoming a successful and confident student. Suitable for all students. Shortlisted for the Non Obvious Book Award.

A 30-item toolkit for anyone learning anything

In The A Level Mindset, Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin share the secrets of coaching students to develop the characteristics, habits and mindsets which will help them realise their potential. Those students who make real and sustained progress at A level aren't necessarily the ones with superb GCSEs. Some students leap from average results aged 16 to outstanding results aged 18. Others seem to hit a ceiling. But why? It was in trying to answer this question that the VESPA system emerged. Steve and Martin have cut through the noise surrounding character development and identified five key characteristics that all students need to be successful: vision, effort, systems, practice and attitude. These characteristics beat cognition hands down. Successful students approach their studies with the right behaviours, skills and attitudes: they understand how to learn and revise effectively, they’re determined and organised, they give more discretionary effort and they get top results. Success at A level is a result of character, not intelligence. Much has been written about growth mindsets and character development in recent years, but teachers are still left wondering how to apply these ideas in their contexts: how can these theories help learners in practice? Taking cues from the work of Peter Clough, Carol Dweck and Angela Lee Duckworth, and informed by their collective 30 plus years of teaching and coaching, Steve and Martin have spent years researching how character and behaviours affect student outcomes in their sixth form. After identifying the core traits that contributed to student success, they developed practical activities to help every student develop the A Level Mindset. Discover 40 concrete, practical and applicable tools and strategies that will supercharge learners’ ambition, organisation, productivity, persistence and determination. Suitable for teachers, tutors, heads of sixth form or anyone else who wants to help A level students achieve their potential, The A Level Mindset offers 40 easy-to-use activities to develop students' resilience, commitment, buoyancy, motivation and determination. It could be your key to transforming student outcomes.

40 activities for transforming student commitment, motivation and productivity

The A Level Mindset

Constance DeVereaux

The story of arts and cultural policy in the twenty-first century is inherently of global concern no matter how local it seems. At the same time, questions of identity have in many ways become more challenging than before. Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World explores how and why stories and identities sometimes merge and often clash in an arena in which culture and policy may not be able to resolve every difficulty. DeVereaux and Griffin argue that the role of narrative is key to understanding these issues. They offer a wide-ranging history and justification for narrative frameworks as an approach to cultural policy and open up a wider field of discussion about the ways in which cultural politics and cultural identity are being deployed and interpreted in the present, with deep roots in the past. This timely book will be of great interest not just to students of narrative and students of arts and cultural policy, but also to administrators, policy theorists, and cultural management practitioners.

Martin Griffin

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