Teaching English is commonly separated in curriculum statements into spoken language, reading and writing. However, it is important to remember that all the modes are interrelated and that progress in one mode is supported by development in each of the others. If all children are to develop their language skills, and particularly their access to academic forms of language, they need learning challenges that are accessible and supported by inclusive and culturally sustaining teaching and learning approaches. English is a complex ‘subject’ in that it draws on a range of disciplines, amongst them literature, linguistics, child development, psychology, sociology and cultural studies. Planning always has a pre-history and an imagined future. To be able to move children's learning forward, a teacher needs to discover what children already know and how and where to take learning forward.

Different theories of language acquisition indicate that spoken language is social, cultural and communicative and that children bring with them considerable implicit knowledge about language when they come to school. There are debates about how socio-economic factors influence children’s spoken language: some describe deficits in children’s language while others identify the language assets children bring from home language experience. It is important that teachers know as much as possible about children’s language resources drawn from home, particularly bilingual children’s funds of knowledge. The teacher’s role is crucial in planning for effective development of spoken language and for the range of functions, audiences, purposes and contexts for spoken language. Part of this provision is to establish a supportive classroom environment for spoken language. In addition, catering for equity and inclusion are essential elements in planning for a full spoken language curriculum.

Spoken language is essential for learning. Research shows that effective classroom talk occurs when teachers have a clear idea of how to provide supportive and productive contexts for talk that encourage participation and dialogue. Teachers need to ask genuine questions which do not merely require children to guess what they are thinking or recall simple and predictable facts as well as allowing time for children to formulate ideas through small and large group discussion. In response, children should be encouraged to give extended, thoughtful answers. In effect, classrooms need to promote genuine learning conversations. Teachers’ own language has particular features that can demonstrate the vocabulary and repertoire of talk in different contexts. Listening carefully to pupils’ voices and responding to what those voices reveal, lies at the heart of effective teaching and learning, particularly when teaching children for whom English is an additional language (EAL).

Narrative, both as story and drama, brings together the worlds of reality and imagination in order to help people make sense of their lives. Storytelling often starts in the home and it is worth teachers recalling their own early language experience as a basis for classroom work. In the classroom, narrative has both emotional (affective) and intellectual (cognitive) dimensions, helping to express feelings and empathise with others and to learn more about the world. When teachers become storytellers, they can take children with them on voyages of discovery and encourage the children, too, to become storytellers, enlivening their learning through imaginative and more extensive use of language. Drama and role play equally offer potential for individual emotional and creative development, collaborative learning and the expression of social and cultural identity. The teacher’s role is central in leading children to dig into the deeper meanings of the texts and situations they meet. Both drama and storytelling offer sound support for children who experience difficulties with learning and bilingual learners.

Assessing spoken language includes not only the types of talk that might be expected – formative, informative, performative and reflective – but also talk behaviours and how these affect children’s oral fluency and assurance in the classroom. An outline of the value of group work includes suggestions of how to manage flexible classroom groupings. Assessments can be made for different purposes (formative, summative and diagnostic) and choices made about how, what, when and why to assess, as well as about who does the assessments, will affect the kinds of assessment used to show progress. Assessments should be staged and systematic, using observations and video recording where appropriate and including the children in self- and peer assessment. Catering for a range of learners, including bilingual children (EAL) and those who experience difficulties with learning, is not as difficult as it may appear, since good practice for those groups is equally effective for mainstream learners. The Scale of Progression in Spoken Language offers a means of describing progress and achievement.

The chapter outlines a range of perspectives on reading, including cognitive- psychological and psycho-linguistic theories, the so-called ‘simple’ view of reading and broader sociocultural and sociopolitical approaches, concluding that a balanced approach to teaching reading needs a sense of the complexity of what is involved in becoming a reader. The role of the teacher as a reader who draws on personal reading experience is central to developing fluent and assured readers. As well as reading a range of printed texts, reading on screens is now an everyday feature of children’s reading experience, including e-books, the internet and film and teachers can use these reading experiences to good effect in the classroom. Examples are given for ways of organising a balanced and rich reading curriculum to include the key reading experiences: reading to children; reading with children (shared and guided reading);and reading by children (independent reading).

Pleasure in reading is crucial in developing fully rounded readers. Reading for pleasure is a slippery concept, involving engagement, motivation, satisfaction, fulfilment and purpose. Schools and teachers have an important role in promoting pleasure in reading and this chapter describes strategies that will support children’s developing sense of what it is to be a successful and satisfied reader. As important as the strategies, are the resources schools provide, which should reflect children’s interests and experiences, as well as expand their reading horizons through working together to make sense of challenging texts. These include opportunities for independent reading, using apps to support reading and creating diverse, comfortable, supportive and social environments for reading in the classroom. In establishing an environment to support reading for pleasure and purpose, teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature and the promotion of children’s agency as readers are central.

Before formal instruction can begin in school, children need to have established certain concepts about words and reading, drawn from their experience of texts in the environment, home and community. The orchestration of reading combines semantic cues (searching for meaning), syntactic cues (sentence grammar and punctuation) and graphophonic cues (the relationship between phonics and graphic representation). There are debates about the most effective – or ‘right’ – way to teach phonics which need to be related to the wider processes of teaching early reading including teaching reading strategies and behaviours in order to support children reading fluently with expression and intonation. To overcome possible barriers to children becoming successful readers, it is important to establish a rich reading environment and a balanced approach in the early years. Home and community experience of literacy are crucial in supporting children’s school-based reading and teachers need to find out about and build on children’s experience of texts at home, particularly those related to on-screen reading.

Comprehension lies at the heart of reading. It has been defined in a variety of ways but essentially involves getting to grips with a text. A highly complex process, comprehension involves a range of components which work together to help readers make sense of what they are reading. Teaching the range of comprehension strategies: predicting, clarifying, questioning, summarising, connecting, noting text structure, visualising and thinking aloud, aided by reciprocal teaching, allows young readers to develop their own inner thought processes and to develop fluency -an important element in reading comprehension. Comprehension of written texts can be effectively supported by using film. More focused comprehension can be developed through strategies such as those described in DARTS(directed activities related to texts)which support understanding by hands-on manipulation, active analysis and re-presentation of texts and the targeted use of skimming and scanning techniques.

If children are to become successful and committed readers, planning for and assessing reading has to include more than skills. Formative and summative assessment must be based on the provision of a wide and rich range of texts and the introduction and development of a flexible repertoire of reading strategies and behaviours. Teacher modelling and discussion of reading contribute to establishing reading communities, and reading circles, journals and blogs offer opportunities for teachers to evaluate children’s reflections on their reading. Struggling readers can be supported by diagnostic assessment based on miscue analysis and running records. For developing bilingual readers it is important that teachers find out about their existing language and literacy experience before embarking on any strategies to improve their reading. The issue of gender differences in reading is outlined in terms of effective ways to narrow the gap, including the importance of self-esteem. The Scale of Progression in Reading offers a means of monitoring, recording and reporting progress in all aspects of reading development.

Poetry is everywhere – in songs, rhymes, jingles, books, films – and children’s experience of poetry at home and in their popular cultural interests is a good place to start in teaching poetry. However, the question ‘what is poetry?’ has been a conundrum for people over the ages and it is worth asking children to add their ideas. Sight, structure, sound, sense and the body are essential elements for reading and responding to poetry as well as an environment which provides rich experience of poetry in all its forms. The teacher’s role in critical in sharing and modelling reading and response to poetry, including poetry in performance. As well as being a delight in its own right, poetry can support learning across the curriculum and is particularly effective in supporting bilingual or multilingual (EAL) learners. The chapter includes many suggestions for good poetry collections and anthologies, as well as poetry websites.

Several major theories have informed current approaches to teaching writing: cognitive theories, focusing on individual development of skills and strategies; sociocognitive theories, which build on these but emphasise the role of social factors; theories which include community experience; genre theory, which identifies a range of text types to be taught; writing as design, which sees the construction of meaning much like the construction of a material object; and multiliteracies and critical literacy perspectives. Recently there has been emphasis on teachers as writers and the significance of the teacher as a role model. The chapter identifies the range and repertoire of writing: text type, medium, purpose, readership and function. Pupils’ perceptions of writing can inform teachers about how to shape classroom approaches to writing and a brief outline of early writing development shows how, even before they are writing recognisable words, children know a great deal about the purposes and audiences for writing. The chapter concludes with a section considering the range of writers, including biliterate and multiliterate learners, and gender and writing.

Writing composition is a complex combination of gathering and expressing ideas, communicating them to a reader and getting the structure and technicalities right. The individual writer has to find a unique voice but, paradoxically, perhaps, this is often found in the social aspects of composition: the personal within a community of writers. It is tricky for teachers to balance the competing demands of individual development, and collaborative endeavour and spaces – both real and metaphorical –are important to support developing writers. Writers benefit from having models and examples of adults as writers, whether these are the adults in the classroom or visiting writers. While models and examples of writing are useful in developing both narrative and non-fiction writing, it is important to be aware that not all narratives or non-fiction writing will or should follow generic formulae. Storymaps, frames and scaffolds can be helpful, but children’s written creativity needs to be allowed space to breathe.

English spelling is highly complex, and supporting writers to spell conventionally in English involves a repertoire of spelling strategies and knowledge. Spelling should be taught through plenty of authentic writing experiences. Children can be shown that there are many sources of information that they can draw upon as spellers and no one strategy will ever be enough. Young spellers will thrive best in an environment where spelling accurately is seen as something that is necessary in a final draft.

Factors that lead to legible and fluent handwriting include: explicit attention to handwriting, teacher demonstration and modelling. Although handwriting remains an essential skill, there is a significant gap in research and advice on teaching keyboard skills which needs to be filled. There are many reasons why children experience difficulty with handwriting and teachers need to be observant and tactful in helping children develop fluent and legible handwriting.

Grammar and punctuation are tools to make meaning clear for speakers and writers of a common language. Fluent users of a language have considerable implicit knowledge of language structure and how to make meaning clear to themselves and others. Teachers have to plan to decide what aspects of sentence grammar (syntax) to make explicit to children so they are more aware of the choices they can make, particularly in their writing, to get better at creating the messages and texts they want to or are asked to compose. Grammar and punctuation are best learned in real reading and writing contexts. There is no evidence that the decontextualised learning of rules and definitions lead to improvements in children’s spoken or written language and basing teaching on genuine texts is the best way forward in developing secure knowledge and use of grammar and punctuation.

Assessment forms part of the process where a teacher plans to move the class forward to the next learning objectives. There are different aspects of assessing writing, some formative and some summative: marking, correcting, responding, describing progress and final assessment and the chapter includes suggestions about how teachers can allow for differentiation. Pupils’ self-assessment or evaluation and self-regulation in writing also needs to be included in response to and assessment of writing. There are sometimes concerns about the amount of time a teacher may have to spend on marking or responding to writing and the chapter outlines how to manage selective and effective response throughout a teaching sequence. The Scale of Progression in Writing gives a descriptive framework for monitoring and reporting on progress and the writing miscue analysis provides a diagnostic tool to help in supporting children who experience difficulties with writing.

As a relatively recent addition to the English curriculum, digital literacies are not always specifically referred to in national curriculum documents. Nevertheless, children have considerable experience of digitally presented texts from home which needs to be built on in school. Children use a range of reading apps and internet sources for reading, both for leisure and for information, and their experience of the structures and facilities of computer games can be assets in understanding narrative structure as well as contributing to problem solving. There are also increasing classroom opportunities for children to compose texts using digital technology, whether spoken texts as in blogs or vlogs, as communications between groups of readers, or in the creation of more finished multimodal texts. Digital technology is particular useful in supporting learners who might find traditional classroom work challenging. The chapter ends with some guidance about how to describe progress in composing and reading digital texts.

Multimodality – the combination of modes of communication to express meaning – has its roots in theories of social semiotics. While it can be argued that texts have always been multimodal, reflecting as they do the voices of those who have informed writers, in the last fifty years texts have become more evidently combinations of image, spoken and written words, movement, sound and physical expression. This chapter outlines classroom practices in reading, hearing, experiencing and composing multimodal texts. As well as the multimodality of texts encountered in the classroom, teaching itself is a multimodal activity, and the role of the teacher is crucial in creating a classroom environment which is open and inclusive. Since making progress in reading and composing multimodal texts needs attention to a wider range of features than identified in more traditional forms of literacy, the chapter includes suggestions for describing progress in reading and composing multimodal texts.

Critical literacy is an essential element of literacy education, particularly with the proliferation of social media and internet use, where disinformation and misinformation can be widely spread. From the earliest years, children need to be helped to read analytically and to question the veracity and sources of all the spoken and written texts they encounter. Rhetoric and argument are key in critical literacy education; if children understand how persuasive texts are constructed, they are in a better position to be aware of the moral, emotional and rational aspects of what is being presented and, by being more informed, in a better position to make choices. However, critical literacy is not only a means of questioning what is being said or written, it also implies making changes. Case studies give examples of how teachers have raised awareness of social and cultural issues of power and equity, how they have tackled sensitive and possibly contentious content of texts, and encouraged children to begin to make a difference to the world they live in.