Developing children''s writing abilities boosts their confidence, creates enjoyment and relevance in the task and cultivates a range of decision-making and problem-solving skills that can then be applied across the curriculum. The Countdown series provides all the support you need in helping children to improve their prose, poetry and non-fiction writing.

Countdown to Creative Writing is a comprehensive and flexible resource that you can use in different ways:

• 60 stand-alone modules that cover all the essential aspects of writing a story
• countdown flowchart providing an overview showing how modules are linked and how teachers can progress through them with the children
• photocopiable activity sheets for each module that show how to make the decisions and solve the problems that all writers face along the road from first idea to finished piece of work
• teachers'' notes for each module with tips and guidance including how modules could be used as stand-alone units, but also with suggestions for useful links between modules, and curriculum links
• a self-study component so that children can make their own progress through the materials, giving young writers a sense of independence in thinking about their work
• ''headers'' for each module showing where along the ''countdown path'' you are at that point.

In short Countdown to Creative Writing saves valuable planning time and gives you all the flexibility you need - teachers might want to utilise either the self-study or ''countdown'' aspects of the book, or simply dip into it for individual lesson activities to fit in with their own programmes of work.