News

NEW: 'Write in' TASC Booklets for Pupils

We have recently published a high quality, full colour TASC booklet for primary age pupils to record their TASC thinking in. These 16 page booklets include full text and icon wheels, colour-coded pages for each segment of the wheel, notes pages and simple guidance on using TASC to improve your thinking. Use the booklets to save records of pupils creative thinking or to send home for sharing with parents and carers. Booklets cost from 35p each. As usual, Members get 10% discount. Please visit the online shop for further details.

TASC Story

New: TASC Story for children aged 7-11. A children's story illustrating the TASC process is now available for free download on the Free Resources page

Footsteps Through the Mist

The first, semi-autobiographical, novel by Belle Wallace. This magical and poetic book is enchanting and thought-provoking. An inspiring read which reveals something of Belle's background and the roots of her passion for learning.

Set in South Wales in the forties, the novel vividly captures the life of Ellie Ewes, a gifted, sensitive, working-class girl growing up with poverty and prejudice. But the story is not just about Ellie’s fight to survive, it is about her personal triumphs as she laughs her way through problems, or explodes with anger when life gets tough. The older, professionally successful Ellie, steps back into her past, and recreates the agonies and ecstasies of her early life in absorbing detail. The style of the novel is an unusual and rich blend of lively, earthy, conversations, linked by the voice of the mature narrator, and the reflective comments of the adult Ellie retracing her footsteps through the mist of growing up. The novel is a superb patchwork of comedy and tragedy laced with laughter, longing, disappointment, tears, successes, love and hate.

Reviews

I sat down this morning to just read a couple of chapters. - But then I couldn't put it down. - Because of the depth and richness of the reflective parts I shall have to re-read it again to appreciate the intensity of the words.
Sue Mordecai Senior Adviser for Bromley

Belle Wallace's first novel, --- arrives towards the latter stages of a highly distinguished professional career in education.  --- it mirrors aspects of Belle's own memories, capturing as it does the sights, sounds, smells, hopes, fears, rages, kindnesses and child-epic incidents of a busy Welsh girlhood surrounded by sisters and evocations of a time long past. [the novel] - at times invoking hints of other writers, both Welsh (Dylan Thomas) and 'foreign' - Gerald Durrell, Joyce, Miss Read, even Lawrence.
Marie Huxtable, Senior Psychologist, Bath and NE Somerset

I am enjoying [the novel] - it is poignant, funny and refreshing--just like you.
Dorothy Sisk, Emeritus Professor, Lamar University, Texas

I think it is a remarkable work and so moving.
Julie Fitzpatrick, CEO NACE (National Association for Able pupils)

I have just read your [first novel] which I think is a brilliant book. --- I found myself underlining pages for reflection. It is touching and deeply moving on every page. The book really works for this reader. --- This is a fluent, engaging and memorable read. It is a small masterpiece you will want to read and to share with others. It is about going home and not being able to go home at the same time.
Michael Pomerantz, Senior Psychologist, visiting Professor, University of Sheffield

This novel presents a unique view --- of the challenges and triumphs faced by a highly gifted student who is raised in extreme poverty.   Woven through this narrative are the colloquial customs and cultural traditions of a town in Wales --- Far more important, however, is the evolution of thought and experience of the central character, Ellie Hughes, as she creates her own world and ventures into new experiences beyond the daily chaos in which she finds herself. In addition, this novel is written in poetic prose, interspersed with conversational dialect, and is rich is imagery, metaphor and innuendo.   Each verbal "image" needs careful thought and consideration, leading to an understanding far greater than the narrative itself, however gripping the events.
Dr Gillian Eriksson, University of Central Florida

Published Price: £9.99 inclusive of postage and packing (UK deliveries only: please add £6 for International deliveries).

You can order through the online shop, by phone (01227 453234) or email (admin@tascwheel.com)