Free Resources

English 4-11 Magazine – Sample issue

View one of our past magazine issues included below to see the useful content that you can expect from this publication as a UKLA member.

UKLA Conversations Series: ‘Finding Critical Literacies’

The UKLA Book Awards 2020 Winners

The UKLA Book Awards team and teacher judges announce the winners of the 2020 Awards for the 4 categories.

Diversity Matters to UKLA

UKLA’s selection of recommended books for Primary readers that support Black Lives Matter

UKLA Conversations Series: Online Teaching & Learning in ITE

UKLA Webinar Series – Julia Gillen, Social Media in the Early 20th Century

In this presentation with a Q&A, Julia Gillen explains why it is reasonable to call Edwardian picture postcards social media.

UKLA Webinar Series – Sabine Little, Supporting Multilingualism in the Classroom

This talk explains why heritage language development is important, and how everyday school literacy practices can be adapted to include multilingualism.

Free Resources

Activities and Ideas for all Ages

Here are our suggestions for on and off line activities for all ages.

UKLA Webinar Series – Debra Myhill, Grammar in the Spotlight

Improve your understanding of verb phrases and noun phrases

Free Resources

Grammar in its Place…Putting the teaching of grammar back in to the heart of books

This is the first article in a new series that demonstrates how grammar can be taught in a rich literature context. The first of the series is being provided as a free resource to coincide with the UKLA Grammar conference. Further resources will be provided on the member’s site. In this first paper, the wonderful book by Carol Ann Duffy called Lost Happy Endings can be used to teach quality grammar in context for a variety of year groups. At the heart of the project was the determination that grammar should be taught in context and through high quality books. Having worked with schools on grammar training in the locality, it had become clear that many teachers lacked the knowledge of what grammar could be explored through real books.

Free Resources

Building understanding, sharing identities

This is a chapter from the UKLA publication Literacy and Community: developing a primary curriculum through partnerships. It describes how a class teacher and a literacy consultant in a multilingual school in Birmingham developed a teaching sequence to explore identity and citizenship. The teacher, Katie Palmer, is now Deputy Head Teacher and Curriculum and Assessment Leader, and the school now has 356 children on roll. The book Literacy and Community invites readers to reflect on their own practice and the chapter ends with some prompt questions. If you find this article interesting, why not look in the UKLA bookshop for Literacy and Community for examples of partnerships with homes, parents and communities throughout the primary age range.

Free Resources

It’s Seriously Comic – a Year 2 Case Study

This article is an updated version of a chapter from the UKLA publication Beyond Words: Developing children’s response to multimodal texts where teachers in a multilingual school in Birmingham introduced children to multimodal texts through reading and making comic strip stories. Since this chapter was first written, the school has grown so that there are now 938 children on roll including the Nursery, and the Assistant Head Sarah Abraham is now Deputy Head Dr Sarah Allen.

The Tsunami project: writing narrative poetry

In an extended cross-curricular project, Years 3 and 4 create a poem scroll based on a traditional Bengali form of poetic narrative. Through drama, discussion and close examination of the original poem, the children came to understand the horrors of the tsunami and wrote and illustrated their own narrative poem, which they made into a scroll.

Free Resources

No secret: using good models to write narrative in Year 2

In this article, Rebecca Kennedy describes how a year 2 teacher has planned and taught a sequence of literacy lessons for young writers, with cross curricular links to geography and art.

Harold Rosen Lecture 2018

Dr John Potter, University College London, Dynamic Literacies, Third Spaces and Everyday Practices: The ‘Other Possibilities’Delivered at the 54th UKLA International Conference at the Mercure Holland House Hotel in Cardiff on Sunday 6th July 2018.

UKLA Book Awards 10th Anniversary Film

A film by UKLA to celebrate the UKLA Book Awards 10th Anniversary. UKLA representatives talk about their favourite books from the past 10 years of the award.

Curriculum and Assessment in English 3 to 19: A Better Plan

CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA have come together to make a common statement about the curriculum and assessment in English across the whole school age-range. This statement is made up of 6 PDFs available to download.

Promoting Reading for Pleasure

A specially commissioned resource designed to support parents and carers as they help their children to enjoy reading. Written by UKLA member Polly Atkinson, a highly experienced literacy educator based in school. While they are designed for parents and carers, you may find them helpful for discussion with teacher colleagues, student teachers and other practitioners.

Reasons for reading: why literature matters

Taking as its starting point a selection of surveys and policy documents before moving to consider views from theorists, writers and young readers, this article seeks to stimulate debate about why reading literature as part of the curriculum still matters.

Policy and the search for explanations for the gender gap in literacy attainment

UKLA / Wiley-Blackwell Research in Literacy Education Award: Award Winner – Literacy 2012.
This paper considers how policy-led processes of education reform have reshaped the space in which to think about gender and literacy.

Curriculum review and planning tool

The review and planning tool will help providers to support the development of a school curriculum as well as the English curriculum. The review format means that the materials can be used by tutors, schools, groups of schools or individuals as a means of identifying strengths and areas for attention and development.

Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers – Research projects, resources and evaluations

This UKLA project was planned in response to recurring evidence that suggests children in England continue to read less independently and find less pleasure in reading than many of their peers in other countries (Twist et al., 2003; 2007).

“How people read and write and they don’t even notice”

“How people read and write and they don’t even notice”: everyday lives and literacies on a Midlands council estate. UKLA / Wiley-Blackwell Research in Literacy Education Award: Award Winner – Literacy 2014.

Reading and Writing Fact Cards: Professional Development Activities

UKLA has published key professional development activities to support the popular reading and writing fact cards. The activities are designed to support professional development in schools and will be invaluable to literacy leaders in running training and staff meetings. You can download cards on a range of topics, including Grammar, Spelling, Puncuation and Working with stories.

Critical Reading of Magazines: Free resources from Egmont

These teaching materials will develop the critical reading of magazines in KS2 classrooms (although we feel they would be of interest in KS3 and ITE as well).

Reading for Pleasure

This article by Teresa Cremin has been developed for the National College discussion on wider reading and reading for pleasure.

Materials to review provision for teaching writing

These materials focus on developing key aspects of quality whole-class teaching of writing. The surveys encourage teachers to think about their own strengths as writers. There are also surveys for pupils which will give teachers a fuller understanding of just what children know about writing.