Bentley Wood — A 68-page Business & Economics book built around exam command words and a revision tracker

The brief

Bentley Wood's Business & Economics department came to us for a book that would carry students from Year 10 through to the exam — not a generic exercise book, but one with the specific tools their students keep needing in lessons, in homework and in revision.
The team was clear about what those tools were. Students lose marks because they don't unpack command words properly — "analyse" gets treated like "describe," "evaluate" like "explain." Students arrive at revision season without a clear map of what they've covered, what they've made notes on at home, and what they've actually revised. And students lose easy marks on calculation questions because they can't remember the formula, or write extended answers that read as a list rather than a connected argument.
The department wanted those four things — command words, a revision map, formulae, and connectives — printed in every student's book, with a clear effort rubric on the inside cover so students know what "5* effort" looks like before they've written a word.

What we designed

Working with the Bentley Wood Business team, we built a 68-page Business & Economics book with the department's most-used references baked in.

A school-branded cover with ruled lines for name, class, teacher and subject, and the Bentley Wood logo top-left.
A four-tier effort rubric on the inside cover — from "exemplary" down through "cause for concern" and "intervention required" — describing in plain language what each level looks like in classwork, response to feedback, organisation, participation and self-motivation. Students see exactly what they're being judged on, and where they currently sit.
A command words glossary covering every verb students will meet in a Business exam — analyse, apply, calculate, compare, define, discuss, evaluate, explain, identify, justify, outline and the rest — with a clear instruction for what each one is actually asking the student to do, and worked examples where helpful ("E.g. analyse whether Jo becoming a sole trader was a good choice").
An independent student revision tracker for GCSE Business Theme 2, listing every topic across the five sub-themes (Growing the business, Making marketing decisions, Making operational decisions, Making financial decisions, Making human resource decisions) with three tick-boxes per topic: Learnt in class, Notes made at home, Revised. One spread, the whole theme mapped.
A GCSE Business formula sheet covering every calculation students need to know — total costs, revenue, gross and net profit, gross and net profit margin, break-even (units and revenue), margin of safety, net cash-flow, opening and closing balances, interest on loans, and average rate of return — since formulae aren't provided in Paper 1 or Paper 2.
An extended writing connectives spread giving students the phrases to structure longer answers — describing, explaining, summarising, comparing and contrasting, giving opinions, adding ideas, connecting ideas, sequencing — alongside the contrast, time and reinforcing words that turn a list of points into a connected paragraph.
Lined pages throughout for class notes, positioned so students can flip back to the command words and connectives mid-answer.

The finished book

Every Bentley Wood Business student opens the same book onto the same effort rubric, the same command word definitions, the same revision tracker and the same formulae — the tools the department was previously printing on separate sheets are now permanently to hand, in the book students bring to every lesson.