ABSTRACT
In September 1998, as part of the UK government’s National Literacy Strategy (NLS) for England, a literacy hour was introduced into classrooms for children aged five to eleven. The place of this dedicated hour of literacy in the primary timetable is now established in the vast majority of schools, along with the use of the ‘Framework for Teaching’ (DfEE, 1998) which sets out, term by term, what is to be taught at word, sentence and text level. The hour is structured around approximately fifteen minutes of whole class, shared text work; fifteen minutes of whole class, word and sentence level work; twenty minutes of independent or guided work; and ten minute plenary (see Huxford, 2002 this volume).
