Teaching English Creatively

What does it mean to teach English creatively to primary school children?

How can you successfully develop pupils’ engagement with reading and writing skills?

Teaching English Creatively demonstrates the potential of creative teaching to develop children’s knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes. Underpinned by theory and research, it also offers informed and practical support to both students in initial teacher education, and practising teachers who want to develop their teaching.

Illustrated by examples of children’s work, this book explores the core elements of creative practice in relation to developing engaged readers, writers, speakers and listeners. Creative ways to explore powerful literary, non-fiction, visual and digital texts are offered throughout. Key themes addressed include:

• meaning and purpose


• play and engagement


• curiosity and autonomy


• collaboration and making connections


• reflection and celebration


• the creative involvement of the teacher.

Stimulating and accessible, with contemporary and cutting-edge practice at the forefront, Teaching English Creatively includes a wealth of innovative ideas to enrich literacy practice.

Written by an experienced author with extensive experience of initial teacher education and English teaching in the primary school, this book is an essential purchase for any professional who wishes to embed creative approaches to teaching in their classroom.

Teresa Cremin (Grainger) is Professor of Education at the Open University, UK and President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (2007-9).

Eve Bearne is recently retired from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. Her research interests are children’s production of multimodal texts and gender, language and literacy.

Henrietta Dombey is Professor Emeritus of Literacy in Primary Education at the University of Brighton.

Maureen Lewis is an independent consultant and honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter.