An extensive body of literature has now grown up around what has commonly been termed 'The Genre Debate'. This debate ranges from the position which treats genres as fully determined in all essential characteristics and therefore as outside the scope of effective individual action, to positions which treat genres as relatively fluid structures, subject to actions of socially located individual agents. Until recently there has been comparatively little attention given to the topic of how 'novice readers', and in particular school pupils, can best be assisted to understand the forms and functions of different texts. However, this picture is now changing. The work of Wray and Lewis (1998), for example, highlighted the importance of familiarising pupils with the specific genre markers of non-fiction texts and the improvements this brought about in their reading and writing. The case study reported in this paper seeks to contribute to this developing area of research into the teaching of genre by focusing in fine detail on the pedagogical practices of an accomplished teacher as she scaffolded and mediated pupils' access to texts (both imaginative fiction and media) by familiarising them with the specific markers of the different genres. This involved: - observation of the ongoing work of three target classes at different stages in the school curriculum (i.e. S1 (lower school), S3 (middle school) and S5 (upper school)); - more focused observation of lessons explicitly designed for each class to familiarise them with the genre features of texts and 'scaffold' their learning; - fine-grained analysis of the written plans for, and audio taped recordings of, these lessons; - focused interview with the teacher whose classes were observed; - focused interviews with 12 pupils, 4 drawn from each of the three classes. Structure of the Presentation To maintain a sharp focus, the presentation concentrates on the teacher's practices, but to maintain a sense of how these practices both shaped and responded to the pupils' contributions, draws where appropriate on the analysis of the pupils' interactions and discourse. The presentation has the following structure: - the current study is set in the context of preceding literature and debate and - general methodological issues that arise in this type of research and the advantages and limitations of the study are considered - the specific methods of investigation and the approach adopted to analysis are described and justified - findings concerning teacher strategies and actions and responsiveness to the demands of different texts, inter-textual reference, pupil background knowledge, pupil discourse and pupil understanding are presented and - the ways in which these actions can be seen to have created a 'space' and tools for pupils to understand and engage with these texts is described. Discussion frames these findings within a sociocultural approach to learning and a transactional account of language and highlights the complex nature of the effective scaffolding of pupils' engagement with the forms and purposes of these genres. In addition it addresses questions relating to the generalisability of the findings of the study and considers implications for everyday practice.