Literacy Tree

Transform your literacy through literature. All you need for a complete book-based approach. Now used by over 45,000 teachers across the worldwide and in 1000 schools as a whole-school approach, the award-winning Literacy Tree was created by teachers for teachers, and is an online, book-based primary English planning resource that includes downloadable planning and resources from Reception to Year 7, which includes book-based resources for teaching writing, comprehension, spelling, assessment and home-learning. Our team provide training, consultancy and INSET to support our Teach Through a Text approach. Back in 2009, Co-founders Lynn and Anthony met when working for an Inner London Local authority school improvement team. They quickly bonded over a love of words, books and coffee, but essentially they loved developing and running training for teachers together. Scratching their heads to find a resource they could recommend to teachers, they realised that what they had created for their training events couldn’t be found in one single resource; time and again, they were creating something that combined high quality children’s literature, drama and grammar which also helped reduce teacher workload, and this simply didn’t exist elsewhere – the whole English curriculum taught creatively through quality children’s literature. When the opportunity to work independently arose in 2012, they decided to take the plunge and create a consultancy based on this core principle and so what started as a seed of an idea grew into The Literacy Tree. With Anthony’s experience of language and literature – knowing exactly how to embed the grammar – and Lynn’s extensive background of drama in education – knowing how to bring a book to life – they then began to write their own resource, using books they loved that they knew worked in the classroom. This became the Teach Through a Text pedagogy and the core values that underpins the approach.