Literacy Tree is a complete, book-based platform for primary schools that covers all requirements of the Primary English curriculum. It can be used as a complete scheme of work or adopted and adapted to suit the needs of your school, academy or trust.
The books we choose help children to grow ideas and expand their minds. We only choose significant and important children's literature to create our book-based resources.
It starts at the roots. We provide book-based planning sequences, Writing Roots, which embed complete curriculum coverage and engage children to write with clear audience and purpose. Our Teach Through a Text pedagogy is the backbone of each sequence.
We sow a seed with Spelling Seeds. We provide a sequence for teaching spelling and vocabulary in context, through investigation and at the point of application. Spelling Seeds complement Writing Roots and use the same texts to provide further short writing opportunities.
We grow literary knowledge through Literary Leaves. We provide a range of sequenced activities that take children through whole books to teach reading comprehension and create critical readers. Literary Leaves use novels, poetry collections and high-quality, non-fiction books that connect to the Writing Roots through Literary Themes.
We branch out to homes through Home Learning Branches which cover some of our favourite texts and contain writing, reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary and further reading opportunities. Many schools use these for homework.
The Literacy Tree app to allows teachers to ANNOTATE and adapt plans to personalise them for their classes, CAPTURE children's work (and tag it to individual or groups of children) and ASSESS children's reading and writing (and link their captured work to each assessment).
We also provide other supporting resources, Whole School and Catch-up Writing Roots, and we share examples of learning with Work Samples, available for every resource.
Literary Themes are the tree canopy; providing an overarching structure that allows children to make deeper connections through subjects and themes. These appear on the Curriculum Maps for each year group as well as mixed-age years.
Literacy Tree Schools become part of an ever-growing forest – our network of schools – with access to Subject Leader and Teacher Toolkits, a range of free training and support.
By teachers for teachers, every resource is created by our small team, who have all been teachers, to ensure consistency and cohesion.
Free Samples
All resources place children’s literature at their core. They can be used as separate components, or together to build a complete, literature-led, whole-school approach.
We provide fully-comprehensive downloadable planning based around high-quality children’s books. These consist of sets of detailed daily session plans for Writing, Reading and Spelling, all with a medium term overviews that can be adapted and personalised. All plans follow our #TeachThroughaText pedagogy to ensure engagement, coverage and outcomes and follow a cohesive sequence so that learning makes sense and is rooted in a strong context. Depth is engendered as children revisit key objectives and skills within different texts and contexts, building understanding over time with frequent opportunities to apply their learning across varied writing opportunities. Books are grouped within themes to ensure links and connections are made within and across the Programme of Study.
The Teach Through a Text approach is the backbone for all of our Writing Roots and each aspect is reinforced within Literary Leaves, Spelling Seeds and the other Literacy Tree resources.
Links are made through themes and conventions within significant literature
Dramatic conventions provide resonance & create a hook with the book
Literary language explicitly taught and applied in writing
Reading comprehension explicitly embedded through prediction and inference
Explicit grammar skills for writing taught in context to be applied purposefully
Explicit spelling skills are explored and linked to vocabulary acquisition
Distinct shorter & longer writing opportunities rather than genre-led
| Best Value | |||
| Free Individual Account | Individual Membership (Three month minimum term) |
School Memberships | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writing Roots | Pay per resource |
1 token per month PLUS - Bonus sign up token! - Purchase up to 2 additional tokens per month |
FREE UNLIMITED |
| Literary Leaves | |||
| Spelling Seeds | |||
| Home Learning Branches | Learning Logs | Whole School and Catch-up resources | |
| Literacy Tree App | Access to RATE unavaliable | ||
| Work Samples | Available once purchased | Available once purchased | |
| 26% off book ordering through ‘Peters’ | |||
| RATE (Recording and Assessment Tool for English) | |||
| Cverage and progression documents | |||
| Editable curriculum maps | |||
| Teacher toolkits | |||
| 20% Discount off all Literacy Tree training places | |||
| Free place on termly subject leader's training | |||
| Free online planning surgeries | |||
The use of high quality literature is important in schools; it expands its readers' horizons, opening minds to concepts and themes such as hope, freedom and justice, as well as providing vital insights into historical settings with geographical and scientific knowledge woven within as part of the narrative.
All our texts sit within literary themes. We believe strongly that these help children make deeper connections with text as they build their liteary repertoire and can compare and contrast books.
Look above at our full thematic map which schools can adopt or adapt to suit their own topics.
Texts are always selected for their quality and significance. There is a wide variety including classics, award-winning texts (Carnegie, Kate Greenaway, Guardian, Newbery and Caldecott) and celebrated and significant authors such as children’s laureates and poet laureates. The range includes novels, novellas, picture books, wordless texts, narrative poems, playscripts and narrative non-fiction. We choose books that include characters and authors from a range of cultures and backgrounds, queer authors and characters and stories about varied family paradigms as well as stories with disabled writers and protagonists.
Within the range, there is a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction genres, such as historical narrative, mystery, adventure and fantasy.
All plans include discovery points to generate interest, engage and activate inference. These link to the books’ themes and employ elements of dramatic conventions, which are maintained and addressed across the sequence.
Plans include explicit grammar objectives so that the grammar skills for writing are seen in context and can be applied within writing. These can be taught ‘discretely’ yet creatively, and still embedded firmly within the context of the book.
In addition, planning integrates spelling investigations and activities, so that patterns and rules can be explored, discovered and then used purposefully within writing.
Built into the plans are a variety of shorter and longer writing opportunities that are purposeful and pertinent to particular points of text. Children are encouraged to write in role, with bias and for a distinct audience, rather than writing in one fixed genre for the whole planning sequence.
Collectively the sequences help children build a literary repertoire; develop a knowledge of significant authors and prepares them for the subject content of critical reading at Key stage 3.
This can best be answered who have used our planning sequences throughout their schools to support their agenda in raising attainment in writing:
'Literacy Tree has without question brought about a dramatic improvement in the quality of children's writing - particularly the boys - and I was so proud at our cross-school moderation meeting when our children's writing had all sorts of literary features which they were using very naturally’
Dan Paton, Deputy Headteacher, Arnot St Mary Primary, Liverpool.
'Our GSP and writing scores were fantastic this year due to all Literacy Tree's planning sequences we follow. We were 93% Expected and 53% Greater Depth when 2 years ago we were 65% expected.’
Amanda Webb, Headteacher, Talavera Junior School, Hampshire
We run an extensive online training programme that supports all aspects of the delivery, subject knowledge and pedagogy of the Teach Through a Text approach and also provide in-person and remote consultancy, including planning surgeries, curriculum mapping, monitoring, moderation, team teaching and staff meetings and our consultants are happy to travel to work with your school. In the past year we have delivered book-based training across the UK, Europe and globally. Please contact us to discuss your training and INSET needs: info@literacytree.com
Every year group includes at least one Writing Root using a poetry text. These are usually narrative poems such as Night Mail in Y6, Jabberwocky in Y4, Jim, A Cautionary Tale in Y3, or The Owl and the Pussy-cat in Y2. Within these sequences children have opportunities to write poetry as well as other types of writing that stem from the poem such as letters and diaries, as well as specific work on comprehension/literary language. We have chosen these because their narrative form lends itself to engagement across an extended period in a similar way to narrative prose.
As well as this, many other Writing Roots include explicit opportunities for poetry reading and writing within the sequence of learning, such as within Can We Save the Tiger in Year 6, children study The Tyger by William Blake and within The Tempest children study and learn some of Shakespeare’s poetry. There are also other opportunities within specific sequences to write poems such as within Cinnamon, children write limericks to mirror the one within the book.
Alongside this, Literacy Tree includes works by poet laureates such Carol Ann Duffy and Ted Kooser. In terms of reading comprehension, Literary Leaves offer opportunity for the discrete study of poems and poetic form, from Year 2 onwards. There are poetry collections from significant poets as well as anthologies around a theme.
Across Literacy Tree's curriculum there are specific non-ficton texts including information books (The Great Fire of London), illustrated biographies (Pride, The Man who Walked between the Towers), fictional explanations (Until I Met Dudley) and narrative non-fiction (Can We Save the Tiger). These lead to a variety of longer and shorter fiction, non-fiction and poetry outcomes depending on the context. Other non-fiction outcomes are covered as part of other (fiction and poetry) Writing Roots, including non-chronological reports, biographies, explanation texts, letters and newspaper reports (both using fictonal and non-fiction contexts).
In addition, Literary Leaves include a variety of non-fiction titles from Year 2 through to Year 6, where children have the opportunity to explore reading comprehension within non-fiction books.
School members receive one free place on each of our half-termly planning surgeries as well as our subject leader sessions, to support you to adopt and embed the curriculum in your setting.
Our flagship schools have been chosen for their innovative use of our book-based approach across the curriculum. They have adopted and adapted our planning sequences to complement their own topics or use our themes. Our flagship schools enjoy sharing how they have used the sequences to support engagement and raise attainment in English with new schools looking to change their pedagogy and curriculum. If you wish to visit any of these schools, we can arrange a suitable time to visit. Alternatively, if you are interested in finding out about becoming a flagship school, do contact us on info@literacytree.com
