ABSTRACT
There are many precise guidelines on the length and content of the lessons, the ways in which pupils should be grouped, the teaching strategies to be used and how time should be divided among different activities. In the Literacy Hour the required lesson structure is shown as a four-stage format which is represented diagrammatically by a clock divided into four parts outlining how much time should be devoted to particular teacher and pupil activities and how many children should be involved at each stage. Teaching involves planning and managing pupil groups; the expert teachers that one worked with did not always manage or organise things in exactly the same ways. There are six different patterns and among these patterns the most popular was the three-stage format version 1. The use of groupings was idiosyncratic from teacher to teacher but there were some common practices which point to best match of pupil grouping to the task in hand.
