Sue Palmer photographSue Palmer is Up for Reading

Dear friends,

I’m thrilled to add my name to the supporters of Down Syndrome Education International's Up for Reading campaign.

Over my ten years as a travelling literacy specialist, I’ve come across many children with Down syndrome flourishing in mainstream schools, and know they’re definitely Up for Reading!

The charity’s work in developing practice and materials to help them master literacy skills is valuable not only to the children themselves but to the wider educational world.

There’s much we can all learn from this remarkable success story.

Sue Palmer,
Author and literacy specialist
     

Find out more about Sue Palmer

Sue Palmer, a former primary headteacher, is an independent writer, presenter and consultant on primary education, notably literacy.

She has written over 200 books, TV programmes and software packages for children and teachers, and acted as an independent consultant to the DfES, National Literacy Trust, Basic Skills Agency, numerous educational publishers and the BBC. 

She is well known to primary teachers around the UK (and, increasingly, worldwide) for her in-service courses and articles in the educational press, especially the TES and Child Education. 

Her ‘skeleton books’ for teaching cross-curricular writing are used in over 10,000 UK schools, and Foundations of Literacy, written with early years expert Ros Bayley has just gone into its third edition.  

 Sue’s best-selling book Toxic Childhood: how modern life is damaging our children… and what we can do about it was her first for a more general audience, and helped spark a national debate about the nature of contemporary childhood. It was followed by a ‘self-help’ book for parents, Detoxing Childhood, and she is at present working on 21st Century Boys, for publication in 2009.