Schools UK wide are struggling with the same issues -children entering school with low levels of language and lacking social and emotional skills. Why is this? It’s all about the quality of the interactions happening for children in their early years. This is currently a hot topic and a focus area for the DfE.

Storytelling in the classroom can be a powerful way to support literacy. Children can be so absorbed in the tale, they are inspired to retell what they’ve heard to others, motivated to read it for themselves and encouraged to take it further and write their own parts or versions. The National Literacy Trust advocates that ‘speaking and listening skills underpin all learning’.

Ludlow Junior School is a medium-sized school with an above-average proportion of disadvantaged pupils. Focused on raising literacy levels, staff introduced various strategies including TA-led intervention groups and restructuring the library to introduce Accelerated Reader. However, the resource that generates the most excitement in the classroom, and which all the pupils want to talk about, is ebook website Fiction Express.