English for Primary and Early Years : Developing Subject Knowledge

From a review of the first edition:

′Ian Eyres tackles every issue of the teacher training curriculum for English making it accessible and easy to understand. As well as this, he offers reflection pieces to check your own understanding… With English exams looming round the corner for my PGCE, this book really has been a lifesaver. Wholeheartedly recommended′ - Amazon Review

English for Primary and Early Years is a comprehensive and essential guide to the structure of English. It draws on the reader′s own knowledge and understanding of English as the basis for analysis of texts at word, sentence and whole text level. The book develops the reader′s understanding of the linguistic and literary knowledge required by the U.K.′s National Curriculum at Key Stages 1 and 2 and by the National Literacy Strategy. Key concepts such as, Standard English, approaches to grammar, genre, clause structure and the role of phonics in reading are addressed in an interactive way which develops the reader′s skills as an active analyst of English, leading to a far deeper understanding than the `do′s and don′ts′ of traditional grammar. The text is fully updated to include the most recent developments in such areas as synthetic and analytic phonics and multimodal texts. An in-depth self-assessment activity is included with the text.

This is a set book for the U.K. Open University Course, ′Ways of Knowing: language, mathematics and science in the early years′.

Ian Eyres is a Lecturer in Education at The Open University and has degrees in both linguistics and education. He was a primary school teacher specializing in language and drama before working in an advisory role on language and curriculum projects in schools with bilingual pupils. He has taught on The Open University PGCE course and produced teaching and assessment materials in English subject knowledge for Primary PGCE trainees. His particular areas of interest are writing, bilingualism, and knowledge about language, on which subjects he has contributed to a number of publications.