Literacy Resources

I talked to a teacher on Wednesday who had been on Talk for Writing training and had read our thoughts about blueprints.  She wanted to know how she could start to introduce the idea of blueprints to the whole school and embed Talk for Writing training with only one staff meeting to do so.  We [...]

One of the most read posts on this blog is the list of books that were suggested for guided reading. However, it was brought to my attention that some of the books  are out of print or no longer available.  It therefore seemed like a good time to update the list and to add some [...]

Today was our second day of the animation project that we are taking part in.  The teachers came with animations their children had made, were ready to discuss the learning that had taken place. I have to say that the animations were fantastic and whilst we talked several things became clearer to me: when working [...]

I thought that about twice a month I would offer a round-up of resources that I have come across via twitter or blogs as I usually end up with too many to blog about individually. My favourite resource so far is this wonderful blog post of  50 digital fairy tale images.  They are fantastic and [...]

This has to be one of the best titles for a long time!  A drove of bullocks by PatrickGeorge is the most beautifully designed non-fiction text around collective nouns. I love an implausibility of gnus or a loveliness of ladybirds.  Each double page spread illustrates the collective noun in a very clever, minimalist way with additional [...]

What a lot Rebecca and I  learned today and we were leading the course!  We had been inspired by Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots for some time but it was the first time that we had a chance to share it with teachers. So what did we learn? In order for children to work with [...]

I am a big fan of David Macaulay and would use him as an author and illustrator to study because he has such a range of non-fiction and fiction that I think there is something for everyone.  Macualay is obviously fascinated by the way things are constructed and how they work. Amazon.co.uk Widgets One of [...]

Well at least the snow enabled me to do one thing .  Use google docs with a colleague.  We were due to plan course on Wednesday but couldn’t get into the centre to work so had to work from home.  We created our powerpoint presentation using google docs Presentation and I have to say it [...]

It was only in December that I came across one of my favourite books of the whole year. Leon and the Place Between written by Angela McAllister and illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith. This is the story of a young boy called Leon who steps into the world of magic via the travelling magician Abdul Kazam. [...]

It seems appropriate that this post is the 100th of this blog.  I try not to set new year’s resolutions because I never seem to keep them.  However, there are some things that I want to continue to do this year. approach the teaching of literacy with an open mind – who knows what exciting [...]