To celebrate Lunar New Year we spoke with Liz Chi Yen Liew, composer of our Chinese Zodiac Dance Workshop based on The Great Race.

Here she demonstrates how the instruments are used in the music, and speaks about her inspiration and approach when composing the piece.

In real life, there are so many heroes who are being brave and working hard to make good things happen.

This week we are going to introduce you to five real life superheroes from history and tell you a little bit about what makes them so amazing!

There’s plenty of research* showing that drama in the classroom has benefits for the development of language. Role play in particular has been identified as a valuable tool for building vocabulary in younger children. Drama is great for oral literacy and storytelling for when children are at a pre-writing age and for when they are developing their writing skills.

Engage your class, take control and save your voice? Bingo!

In this blog, I’ll describe a handful of activities to help you use your voice more effectively, and even demonstrate ways in which you don’t have to use your voice at all!

Exactly as its name states, a brain break is a break from using your brain. It’s a short blast of light physical activity completely unrelated to the task at hand. Just like working out in the gym we need a break every now and then. Students, young and old, often need a chance to reset and refocus.

Creative classroom management doesn’t have to be obvious, colourful, tangible like yet another sticker chart. Putting your imagination into the smaller habits and routines of daily classroom life can help you heaps in achieving some decorum in your classroom…

When you’ve got an empty hall and plenty of space to move around, ideas for a drama lesson are endless. But what happens when you want to introduce drama activities into your normal class time?

This was a question that came up in discussion during our last CPD event in the autumn. As a group we shared our thoughts and ideas for getting creative when you’re in amongst desks and chairs. And here are some of our creative teams’ top tips: 

Here’s the final two movement activities in this blog series to get the maths in your classroom moving! These are two of my personal favourites (best ‘til last) so I hope you enjoy them, too!

Punctuation just got a whole lot more interesting. Kung Fu Punctuation is a phenomenon that has reached schools worldwide, and is proving highly successful in children’s understanding and use of punctuation. Once learned, fun instructional games and competitions can be played to reinforce the sounds and actions - and in turn, the shapes and names of punctuation symbols. And of course it makes comprehension exercises so much more entertaining for all!

Did you enjoy the previous Math and Movement blog entry? Looking for ADDITIONAL activities GREATER THAN the ones before? Read on to find out more - MINUS the puns. (I’ll stop.)

Looking for ways to merge maths with movement? Of course you are! Check out our tried and tested activity suggestions to help you get your Maths moving, with a shake, and a shout, and even a bit of a boogie. And don’t miss out on the developments for EYFS, KS1 and KS2.

The Festival of Lights is fast approaching! And we have had the joy of touring schools across the country this month to help primary school children explore one of the most important stories behind Diwali - The Ramayana. An epic tale of good triumphing over evil, it is a story that can be traced back to 500 BCE (that’s a LONG time ago!) and it’s as much loved today as it was back then.

Especially for new teachers, a sense of having a ‘competence crisis’ can take over as you adjust to the fast-paced, high-pressured, demanding world of education. Here are some creative, low to no-prep activities to lift your spirits and keep you smiling through to Christmas and beyond!

When a child opens a poetry book and look at the pages, what do they see? Rarely do they see uniformity. They see words and letters making all different shapes across a page. Some short, some long. Some with rhyme and some without. Some poems even become the illustration of what they are describing. 

This summer we have been introducing all the books featuring in our World Book Day 2020 Story Explorer workshops. We wanted to share with you why we love these books as well as five of our favourite classroom activities to accompany them. This week is our last (but by no means least!) book in the list by author, comedian and TV personality David Walliams.

In this blog series we have been looking at classroom activities that compliment our Story Explorer World Book Day 2020 selection. So far we have looked at The Rainbow Fish, The Tiny Seed, Stick Man, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda and Fortunately, the Milk. This week we are focusing on a classic tale that follows three brave children on their childhood adventures!

It may be the middle of the summer holidays, but our minds are on World Book Day (7 months and counting…). If you’re short of something to read this summer, head to our World Book Day 2020 book list for inspiration. Other the summer term we have been sharing some of our favourite activities to go alongside our Story Explorer book selection. We are sure that our book in focus this week will make you laugh out loud no matter what your age…

Earlier this term we shared our book choices for World Book Day 2020. The power of a good book selection is something the protagonist of this week’s focus story understands! Our previous blog explored Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, and this week we are looking at another Dahl classic…

In this blog series we have been working our way through the books in our World Book Day 2020 selection for our Story Explorer drama workshops. We have so far looked at activities based on Stick Man, The Tiny Seed and Rainbow Fish. Next up is the first of two Roald Dahl books on the list.

Welcome to the third in our blog series introducing our Story Explorer World Book Day 2020 selection! So far we’ve talked about ideas for The Rainbow Fish and The Tiny Seed. This week it’s the turn of another renowned children’s author Julia Donaldson and her much loved book Stick Man!