Being able to read and write with ease does not just open up imagination and learning, it also helps us to thrive and cope in a world increasingly based on complex information from coding to utility bills. Everyone wants children to make the best start with literacy, but despite the existence of evidence-based programmes of instruction, some do not respond as hoped at first, or show a fade in learning in later school years. This book is about why that happens, and what we can do about it.

Drawing on research and the wide expertise of its authors, it sets out how lifelong literacy is based on crucial aspects of early child development and how these can be assessed and improved in classrooms. The book focuses on five core emerging literacy skills that underpin successful learning for children: concepts of print; phonological awareness; oral language; working memory and executive function; and pencil control. Chapters:

• Guide the reader on how to build the foundations of lifelong literacy, as well as easy-to-do, unintrusive means to assess the different strengths and gaps that learners have.
• Explore how teaching and learning can be adjusted so that all can learn and make progress.
• Contain inexpensive and playful, but effective and practical, ways to develop the skills in an ordinary classroom or home.
• Are accompanied by a downloadable practical toolkit of resources to use with children.

Educators who use this book and reflect on and adapt its ideas, will be more confident in what they are doing, with an enriched understanding of why it fits the children they are educating. It will be crucial reading for early years educators, primary classroom practitioners, educational psychologists, and speech and language therapists.

James McTaggart has been an educational psychologist since 2006, with specialisms in early childhood and also in psychological trauma. He is highly engaged at a national level, in providing advice on policy and developments in early education and applied psychology, for example, as one of the writers of Scotland’s Early Years practice guidance. He has worked with many children, teachers, practitioners, and families facing literacy challenges, as well as health visitors and midwives promoting very early development and mental health. But the highlight of his career has been working with his fellow authors to make their wide range of expertise available and practical in the classroom or playroom to support literacy learning for everyone.

James Cook is a teacher in primary schools in the Highlands of Scotland, he developed a passion for the teaching of literacy, language, and communication, becoming the literacy curriculum leader within his school before taking a literacy improvement role for the whole local authority from 2014. This developed into a strategic responsibility across the Northern Alliance Regional Improvement Collaborative of eight local authorities for literacy, language, and communication. James is currently the head teacher of a primary school and Early Years setting in the Highlands.

Rebecca Castelo is a speech and language therapist. Graduating from University College London in 2007, Rebecca has worked in both England and Scotland. She is passionate about blurring the boundaries between professions, collaboration, and coproduction. She was involved in the Emerging Literacy work whilst in her specialist role for universal intervention; supporting educators on developing language rich environments. Normally confined to the limitations of working with individuals, creating the Emerging Literacy work has enabled a truly developmental approach that has touched the lives of hundreds of children. Always learning and sharing, a confident public speaker with an unrelenting curiosity for others. An avid lover of nature and the great outdoors, wife and mother to two young children.

Jennifer Pickering is an occupational therapist, who has specialised in paediatrics since completing her postgraduate diploma at Bangor University. Following this, Jennifer has had a variety of roles, including in London, Sydney, and the tropics. Settling in the Highlands, Jennifer supports young people with a wide range of additional support needs to overcome occupational challenges. Jennifer has a special interest in supporting those with neurodevelopmental conditions and coordination difficulties to use meta-cognitive approaches to improve their daily life.