OK, I’ve cheated a bit. I suppose this isn’t really to do with teaching per se, but since I received this as a stocking filler over Christmas I can’t put it down!

Munroe explains brilliantly everything from the nuclear bomb to the biro using only the thousand most common words to give some really simple explanations to the most interesting stuff.

I think sometimes teachers become obsessed with acronyms, jargon and making things sound more complicated than they actually are which is why the introduction of the book really resonated with me.

“When I was in school, I learned about space boats (rockets and shuttles) and learned to use lots of big words for things like the shape of the world. Sometimes I would use those big words because they were different from the small words in an important way. But a lot of the time, I was really just worried that if I used the small words, someone might think I didn’t know about the big ones.”

This book really helped me remember why I got into teaching and re-ignited my thirst for knowledge. I’ve already had loads of ideas of how this could be used in the classroom (describing the human organs as bags of stuff inside you – blood pusher, air bag, thinking bag anyone!?) to support children to understand how things work. Obviously vocabulary will need to be provided to meet national curriculum guidelines but thought it was a brilliant starting point!

Available from £6 on Amazon

Bargain!