ABSTRACT

This chapter considers some of the texts teachers might use across the 7–11 age range and suggests ways of dealing with such texts in order to encourage positive response, and to maximize flexibility and variety for teachers and pupils, enabling good practice to flourish. The development of reading from 7 to 11 is a formative educational activity in the widest sense, opening horizons, broadening perspectives, stimulating childrens' imaginative powers, and making possible that which would otherwise not be so. Since its appearance in 1986, The Jolly Postman has proved to be an extremely popular book with pupils and teachers. Jon Scieszka's illustrator, Lane Smith, capitalizes upon the idea of the new learning experience involved for the reader by careful signing through visual text: the page with the important new information tells twice to look out for symbols.