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In this issue, we've decided to do something different and take a look at the new titles that we've published here at iT's over the past few months, including two new activity books and The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook. We also explain our new online Teacher Alert service that's proving to be popular with users.

In April we published The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook by Lindsay Clandfield and Duncan Foord. Regular iT's readers will know Lindsay Clandfield's name. He joined the iT's team in 2001 and has since been a regular contributor and editor. Apart from his work here, Lindsay has also written for Macmillan and onestopenglish. Together with Luke Prodromou, he won the Ben Warren IH Trust Prize for the book Dealing with Difficulties (DELTA Publishing). Now Lindsay has teamed up with Duncan Foord, director of teacher training at OxfordTEFL to write The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook.

The book is "a practical guide on how to survive as an English language teacher inside and outside the classroom". As the authors explain in the introduction, it addresses some of the day-to-day issues that teachers face, based on the belief that you are the glue that holds your lesson plans together, and if you don't feel right then your lessons won't be right. It could be called Surviving Being an English Language Teacher.

This book is not a methodology book about teaching - there are already a lot of very good books like that on the market - but it does address some methodological issues. It's not an activity book, but there are activities that teachers can use. This book is about surviving teaching.

Chapters on the staffroom, teacher burnout and teacher development are included to help you feel more comfortable and confident about being a teacher - before you sit down to plan your lesson. There are also chapters on topics that you will find in other books, such as grammar, in-company teaching, using materials and teaching children, but taken from a slightly different angle. The authors' approach is to take typical challenges voiced by teachers themselves as a starting point and work through them.

There are chapters on body language, culture shock and using mother tongue in the classroom because the authors think these subjects are part of the fabric of teachers' daily lives that are seldom dealt with in training courses or basic methodology books.

There is a guide to the history of EFL, which gives an overview of language teaching methodologies and helps you to situate yourself within the "bigger picture". There are also practical quick reference guides to different aspects related to teaching.

The book comes in a handy A5 size and can be read from cover to cover or dipped into. Versions of many of the articles have appeared in past issues of iT's for Teachers so may be familiar to some readers, but they've all been updated and put together into book format. We think it's a perfect book for both the new and the experienced teacher - but we would say that, wouldn't we!

There are two new titles in the it's english activity book series: it's knowledge and it's arts & media. The it's english activity books are all theme-based, photocopiable resource books with interactive CDs; they're ideal as resource books for the academic year or for shorter summer courses.

Each activity book starts with an introduction and an index, which includes a separate index by level. The rest of the book consists of the teaching material. On each spread the material to photocopy appears on the right page with the corresponding teaching notes on the left. The teaching notes include a quick reference key similar to the key we use in the magazine. The aim is to make the material as easy to use as possible.

it's knowledge contains a collection of teaching activities related to different school subjects such as geography, history, science, maths and technology. The idea is that students can practise their English while learning about the world around them.

In it's knowledge students create a dream classroom, play a geography game and fill their head with numbers. They find out about the human brain, read about Albert Einstein and travel to the planet Mars. They find out if they are a technophobe or technophile, and discover how Hollywood sometimes changes history. They also do a questionnaire about their own language-learning experiences.

it's knowledge is ideal for teachers who want to bring other school subjects into the English language classroom. The book comes with a CD of interactive exercises from the its-english Internet site and audio. The CD also includes pages from the book in PDF format that are designed to be printed or projected onto a whiteboard.

In the past, books of photocopiable material used to be black-and-white and look rather dull. The iT's activity books are full of colour, so you have the choice of copying the material in black-and-white or in colour. The PDF pages on the CD also mean that the colour pages can be projected onto a whiteboard or printed out in colour, making the material more attractive for the students to use.

The other new title is it's arts & media. This activity book contains a collection of teaching activities related to art, television, literature, theatre, advertising and the press. In it's arts & media students talk about art and cover a wall in graffiti. They find out about BookCrossing, write about their favourite books and become a ghost writer. They write news stories and create the front page of a newspaper. They do a questionnaire to find out about their TV viewing habits before creating their own television soap opera. They plan an advertising campaign and explore the world of William Shakespeare.

This book encourages your students to be creative and to enjoy using their English. Many of the activities can be used as mini projects, making it an ideal book for summer courses.

The activities in these books come from past issues of our magazines. All of the activities have been updated and are presented in a format that is easy to photocopy and use.

If you want to know more about these new titles, visit the catalogue section at its-teachers, where you can download the contents page and a sample activity from each book. You can also find out more about the other titles in the series: it's music, it's movies, it's festive, it's personal, it's living and it's travel. You can order any of these titles from its-open.

Finally, we recently started a new email service called iT's Teacher Alerts. The concept is simple: you sign up to receive the email alerts by completing a form at the its-teachers website. We then send you an email whenever an important day or event is about to take place, such as Earth Day. The email includes a short "get started" activity which you can do with your students on (or around) that date. The email also includes a link to a related activity at the its-online sites. The activity will be either a worksheet that you can download and print out or an interactive exercise that you can use with your students in an Internet classroom or set as a task for students to do at home.

When iT's for Teachers started back in 1990, our main aim was to provide teachers with topical teaching material that would help motivate students. The Internet has allowed us to take things even further by providing topical material that can be delivered to teachers instantly.

To sign up for the iT's Teacher Alerts, go to the homepage and follow the link under the current alert. To receive information about what's new, sign up for the newsletter.

All magazine subscribers have access to the its-online sites, which include hundreds of activities, articles and online projects. All you need is your subscriber ID and the password that was sent to you when you subscribed to the magazine. If you've lost your password, use the "contact us" link at the top of the page. Remember to include your subscription details.