Eve Bearne was Project Officer for the National Writing Project after working for 20 years in schools and colleges. She then worked at Homerton College, University of Cambridge as a senior lecturer in language and Assistant Director in Research before moving to the University Faculty of Education as a researcher and lecturer. Eve was President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association from 2003 to 2005 and is a Fellow of the English Association. She has written and edited many books on English, literacy and children's literature, the most recent of which include Teaching Grammar Effectively in the Primary Classroom (2nd Edition, 2020 UKLA) and Talk for Teaching and Learning: The Dialogic Classroom (UKLA 2021) both with David Reedy.

David Reedy is Past President of the UK Literacy Association (UKLA). Until 2014 he was Principal Adviser for primary schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Publications include Talk for Teaching and Learning: The Dialogic Classroom (UKLA 2021) and Teaching Grammar Effectively in the Primary Classroom (2nd Edition, 2020 UKLA) with Eve Bearne, and Guiding Readers: A handbook for teaching reading comprehension to 7-11 year olds (2016 UCL IoE Press) with Wayne Tennant, Nikki Gamble and Angela Hobsbaum. David is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Introduction

Part One Spoken language

Introduction to Part One

1 Developing talk

2 Spoken language for teaching and learning

3 Storytelling, drama and role play

4 Planning for, developing and assessing spoken language

Part Two Reading

Introduction to Part Two

5 Perspectives on reading

6 Reading for pleasure

7 Early reading including phonics

8 Comprehension

9 Describing and assessing progress in reading

10 Poetry

Part Three Writing

Introduction to Part Three

11 What writing involves

12 Writing composition

13 Spelling and handwriting

14 Grammar and punctuation

15 Responding to and assessing writing

Part Four 21st century literacies

Introduction to Part Four

16 Digital literacies

17 Multimodality

18 Critical literacy