Many young children need targeted support and encouragement to help develop their literacy skills. This book contains tried and tested activities to improve listening, verbal reasoning, and language skills in young children and shows you how to turn theory into fun, practical ideas for the classroom. The author shows how to link activities to the Early Learning Goals and the National Literacy Strategy and the book includes: Lesson activities using puppets, nursery rhymes, story boxes, and picture books Suggestions for using role-play Ideas for organizing your play setting to encourage literacy-related play Assessment guidelines Lists of resources A selection of photocopiable material