ABSTRACT

Now in its third edition, The Really Useful Literacy Book is the definitive guide to the high quality teaching of literacy in your primary classroom. Written specifically for primary school teachers and student trainee teachers, this book offers inventive ideas for the classroom together with an accessible and informative summary of the theories that underpin them. It explores creative approaches to literacy teaching as well as offering a range of units on all areas – speaking, listening, reading and writing.

While this book provides creative ideas that can be taken by teachers and developed for their own classrooms, it clearly explains the theoretical rationale for these ideas. It can also be used by school literacy leaders to develop whole school approaches and high quality teaching throughout the school.

This accessible and engaging text will be an essential companion for all primary teachers, at any stage in their career, looking to motivate, engage and challenge their children in their literacy lessons.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|27 pages

The big ideas

chapter 2|31 pages

Principles and practices

chapter 3|17 pages

Foundation Stage: ‘Tell me a story'

chapter 4|15 pages

Foundation Stage: Playing with role

‘Little Boy Blue’

chapter 5|13 pages

Foundation Stage/Y1: Time for rhyme

chapter 6|12 pages

Y1: Outside in, inside out, or reading and writing out and about

Environmental print

chapter 7|19 pages

Y2: Dance your way to a story

chapter 8|14 pages

Y2: Reporting back

Reading non-fiction and writing non-chronological reports

chapter 9|10 pages

Y3: Shapely poems and calligrams

Starting not from text, but from vocabulary and visual images

chapter 10|15 pages

Y3: Dear Giant – Dear Jack

Creating a sequence of letters

chapter 11|11 pages

Y4: Cyclones!

Information books on same or similar themes: literacy across the curriculum

chapter 12|13 pages

Y4: Where did our writing come from?

Exploring the writing process

chapter 13|12 pages

Y5: Writing is not speech written down

Spoken language and written language: a language-based unit

chapter 14|15 pages

Y5: Whatever happened to Lucy Gray?

Classic poetry

chapter 15|17 pages

Y6: ‘We made the story!'

Developing vocabulary and making whole stories with underachieving, uninterested boys

chapter 16|17 pages

Y6: Enjoying a good argument

Writing discursively