Discover The Literacy Tower

 

The Literacy Tower is the perfect bridge between your traditional reading scheme and real, rich language reading experiences. It is designed to extend and accelerate today's young readers with superbly crafted
books, natural fit-for-purpose language and high-interest topics that engage, inspire and ignite curiosity
and creativity – all within a robust literacy framework.

 

Rationale

We believe the best literacy teaching is always done in context and in the course of achieving real rewards – because, from a child’s perspective, the effort simply has to be worth it. Reading is about communicating ideas; its language is shaped by what you are reading, and its structure and form change to suit its purpose. By their very nature, traditional readers with repetitive sentence structure, restricted vocabulary and bland storylines can’t ever reflect that richness of language to engage children.

 

Young readers need to grasp the nuts and bolts of decoding. But to take them beyond a basic capability, they must
be inspired to use those new skills; to move on to books that engage their interest, that encourage their growing confidence and that ignite a real desire to explore the world of print. Traditional readers may tick the “nuts and bolts” box – but can they ever transform a class from mere “decoders” to eager, engaged young readers?

 

That’s the critical cross-over point where The Literacy Tower can make an immense difference. It is carefully designed
to tick all the boxes at every level of reading competency: high-interest, guided and independent reading, all within
a robust literacy framework that extends, accelerates and challenges young readers. Here’s what classroom teachers
are saying:

 

“My kids love your books. In guided reading today, the kids laughed hysterically while reading A Hundred Million Peas (way above their level). The joy of reading was beyond apparent. They wanted to read it over and over again. They loved the alliteration, too: ‘Ghastly green globules!’ One boy easily decoded ‘gargantuan’ and then asked ‘What does it mean?’
That day he had fun using it whenever he could, with the expression ‘Hey, that’s gargantuan!'"

 

“Literacy Tower books are amongst other books in the reading boxes – but they’re the books our kids pick out. As teachers,
we want kids to want to read, and Literacy Tower books do that. The genuinely high-interest non-fiction books have all been designed in ways that are respectful of today’s kids – especially our older boys with fewer literacy skills. And all of them
love the great titles and covers.”

 

Applying traditional levelling systems to The Literacy Tower will often result in bands that seem high for these first
years; but the books themselves are spot-on in terms of delivering high-interest, rich language experiences
that kids genuinely respond to – even if they find themselves nominally reading way above their “expected” level.

 

At the end of the day, that is exactly what we want them to do.