Literacy is key to the development of a child's ability to access information. These resources have been designed to be flexible, and can be used in a variety of ways to suit your own classroom plans or whole school curriculum approach.

The characters that appear in the stories have been developed to cover a wide cultural and ethnic range. The central family, around whom all the stories revolve, are deliberately ordinary – living in a small terraced house, set amid busy streets in an unspecified urban setting.

They meet and deal with a variety of ordinary situations, interacting with family, friends and neighbours in the community, from a variety of religious and racial backgrounds.

In this way every child who encounters these stories should find something that is familiar to them; that stimulates them; that they can identify with, and hopefully motivate them to be safe, daring, sharing citizens.

Each story is written in the past tense to allow greater variety of vocabulary, but at the base of each page the story is encapsulated in a simple sentence in the present tense. This allows flexibility of use with less able readers.

Each story has 16 key words that can be linked to specific messages, or for linkage to the suggested activities in the Teachers Notes. They can be utilised for spelling strategies, practise, and inclusion in creative writing or as handwriting sessions.

The stories can be worked through methodically, progressing chronologically through the alphabet, or dipped in and out for specific letters, themes or issues. The ideas can be utilised in regular timetabled PSHE/PSD/PSE and Citizenship sessions, or in literacy hour or circle time.

The stories can be read aloud in story or circle time with groups or the whole class, using the big books to encourage good listening skills, or even with pairs, groups and individuals reading themselves. They are spring boards for further discussion on the story itself, the use of vocabulary or the issues raised, be they road safety or citizenship issues.

A range of suggestions is given for phonics and spelling strategies, specific grammatical suggestions are given where appropriate at word, sentence and text level.

The Alphabet Chart can be displayed to stimulate discussion and help in dictionary work, or as reference to specific road safety messages contained in the stories.

The Cross Curricular Teachers Guide can be used to extend the use of the a-z of Traffic Tales resources into every area of the national curriculum.

The 26 Small Books can be used for individual or paired reading in the classroom, or for pupils to take home as 'home readers', to read with their parents.

The Interactive Whiteboard CD allows pupils to follow the words on screen as the stories are read - either the full length versions, or simplified versions for less able readers.
You can listen to the stories straight through, or you can pause at any time to discuss with the children what they have seen and heard.
The alphabet game randomly selects letters from the alphabet. Pupils have to match the correct word to the picture. Correct section leads to a relevant road safety message.

The Big Book resource in action...
Click here to view the clip in your default media player.