Our ‘texts that teach’ are the carefully selected books and other writings that we base our BookWrites teaching sequences on.
There are a great many wonderful texts out there to share with children. However, we put a great deal of thought into the ones we choose to write teaching sequences for to ensure they offer:
- something worth discussing
- rich language to explore
- structures (text and grammatical) that are national curriculum age-related and can be replicated to inspire pupils’ original compositions.
To hear from some of our chosen authors, visit our Meet the authors page. Here, several of our favourites talk to us, and you, about their writing!
Download our texts that teach lists below, which we regularly update and add to, and visit our Publications page to find out more, including how to purchase our teaching sequences via our shop.
Did you know that individual titles can be purchased at a saving of 25% off RRP and include plastic jackets, stationery and free delivery as standard?
Text progression
To support teachers with selecting appropriate texts and sequencing these to support writing progression, each list has been annotated to indicate suitability for Year 1 or 2, Year 3 or 4, Year 5 or 6.
Earlier texts tend to be more suitable for the beginning of the year while those towards the end of the lists are increasingly complex in either language or concepts, and therefore could be more appropriate towards the end of the year. Texts noted as good for a particular year are especially useful for teaching specific grammar objectives for that year group. Please note, however, that all the sequences have been written to suit two years of the English curriculum (KS1, Year 3/4 or Year 5/6) and are not intended to be taught in a set sequence.
In all cases, teachers need to make text choices based on the individual needs of their classes: almost all of these texts have been used successfully across two year groups in different contexts.
Years 1 and 2
- Fiction BookWrites texts that teach for years 1 and 2
- Non-fiction BookWrites texts that teach for years 1 and 2
- Poetry BookWrites texts that text for years 1 and 2
Years 3 and 4
- Fiction BookWrites texts that teach for years 3 and 4
- Non-fiction BookWrites texts that teach for years 3 and 4
- Poetry BookWrites texts that text for years 3 and 4