Product reviews for The Literacy Toolkit

What an incredible resource this book is, enjoyable to read, passionately written, theoretically sound, yet firmly grounded in the realities of everyday school life and the world of the modern learner. This exciting, well-researched treasure-trove presents hundreds of creative classroom strategies to help you raise the literacy bar. For leaders and managers, there are plenty of well-conceived ideas for whole school development, cross-curricular literacy, staff training, monitoring and assessment. Whoever you are and whatever you teach, you are a member of your schools literacy development team; Im sure that you will find Amandas ideas illuminating, motivating and empowering.


Six key themes underpin the authors vision of a modern literacy curriculum. They are:

1. The ever-expanding world of mass communications directly affects how children and young adults learn about language.

2. Communications to and between children and young adults are increasingly multi-media, involving images, sound and text.

3. Oracy is the foundation of good literacy.

4. Well-designed cross-curricular approaches provide meaningful contexts for learning literacy skills and knowledge.

5. Helping students to become media and languagesavvy will help them to develop into confident thinkers and willing life-long learners.

6. The importance of being bold, brave and creative! Developing language and literacy skills should be a satisfying and joyful experience for all learners.

Sharon Ginnis, author `Covering the Curriculum with Stories`