Teaching literacy in today's primary and junior secondary schools involves both teaching children what people understand as traditional literacy and also teaching children how to read and produce the kinds of texts typical of the current and emerging information age. This still means understanding grammar as a functional tool in reading and writing but it also now necessarily entails explicit knowledge about how images and layout can be structured in different ways to make different kinds of meanings and how both text and image are used in electronic formats. This major textbook outlines the basic theoretical knowledge teachers need to have about visual and verbal grammar and the nature of computer-based texts in school learning. In doing so it:

* addresses both the present demands in literacy teaching and the emerging demands for teaching the multiliteracies of the information age

* provides accessible, integrative, classroom oriented coverage of the complex range of current and emerging issues (like teaching grammar, visual literacy, the role of computer-based information and communication technology, critical literacy, literacies and learning in English and other curriculum areas)

* includes both theoretical frameworks and detailed practical guidelines with examples of classroom work

* deals with the continuities and differences in the teaching of infants, children in the primary school and the transition to the first years of secondary education