The Really Useful Literacy Book ─ Linking Theory and Practice in the Primary Classroom

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.

Tony Martin, Chira Lovat and Glynis Purnell were formerly based at the Education Development Unit, University of Cumbria. Tony Martin is a literacy consultant who works in primary schools and classrooms developing high quality teaching of literacy.

1. The big ideas 2. Principles and practices 3. Foundation Stage: ‘Tell me a story’ 4. Foundation Stage: Playing with role: ‘Little Boy Blue’ 5. Foundation Stage/Y1: Time for rhyme 6. Outside in, inside out, or reading and writing out and about: environmental print 7. Dance your way to a story 8. Reporting back: reading non-fiction and writing non-chronological reports 9. Shapely poems and calligrams: starting not from text, but from language and visual images 10. Dear Giant –　Dear Jack: creating a sequence of letters 11. Cyclones! Information books on same or similar themes: literacy across the curriculum 12. Where did our writing come from? Exploring the writing process 13. Writing is not speech written down: spoken language and written language: a language-based unit 14. Whatever happened to Lucy Gray? Classic poetry 15. ‘We made the story!’ Making whole stories with underachieving, uninterested boys 16. Enjoying a good argument? Writing discursively