Presenting at National Pingtung University on migrant learners in education

Presenting on 'Inclusion and ethnic minority learners in primary (elementary) education', with Dr Helen Hanna (Leeds Trinity University).

National Pingtung University (國立屏東大學), Southern Taiwan.

Our excellent hosts! (From L-R) Dr Lee-Feng, Dr Ya-Ling, Dr Helen Hanna (Leeds Trinity) and me (ARTiculate Education)

How to build an inclusive classroom? That was the question for our discussion today at a teaching workshop and lecture at National Pingtung University in Taiwan. Dr Hanna presented on her innovative research in the UK and South Africa about how primary schools include ethnic minority learners in their classrooms and some of the challenges and implications for practitioners.

Discussing the impact of picture books on teaching literacy

I was able to add a practical slant on the discussion by presenting on developing empathy in learners through creative literacy teaching, primarily drama to generate discussion and using picture books to generate deep thought. Using The Island – a picture book by Australian-based author Armin Greder – trainee teachers at National Pingtung University participated in activities designed to develop empathy and discussion; we also explored how this is crucial in developing creative writing in young authors.

See below for a photo of students role-playing an argument between the islanders as they decide what to do with the strange arrival. Excellent work! Video to follow....

Thank you to Department Chair Dr Ya-Ling for making us both feel very welcome and also to the students who took part!

Xièxiè! 谢谢!


The students role play an argument based on the Island - should the castaway be allowed to stay or forced to leave?

Progression in primary drama - going beyond the National Curriculum

Drama is an integral component of primary English teaching. It is the engine that drives creative responses to stories, helping children explore characters, settings and predicaments. Yet the primary National Curriculum for England (DfE, 2013) makes scant reference to drama. Some generic guidance indicates the importance of speaking, listening and performing although these points are both too obvious and too generalised to be useful to teachers and subject coordinators hoping to embed drama across the whole school. When writing our forthcoming book, Teaching Shakespeare in Primary Schools: All the World's a Stage (Routledge, David Fulton, 2021), both Maureen and I felt that whole-school drama guidance for primary teachers - so integral to teaching Shakespeare's plays - was notably lacking from online resources currently available (apologies if you have produced such a document but we could not find it!). We decided to compile our own. In fact, you may have found this blog post

Filthy wretch or poor thing? Rethinking the Island, KS2, Week 1

A treat for the final half term - a new workshop at a delightful school in Leeds! This half term I am working with two Year 5 teachers to develop a cross-year group, cross-curricular writing project based on my favourite picture book, Armin Greder's The Island . I've done this book many times and every time the response is different! This week, we got to grips with the facts, possibilities and mysteries of the story. What do we know about the story so far? (we only ever read up to page 6 to leave it on a knife edge...) What doesn't this story tell us and what could we infer or predict? We looked at the crowd of islanders who 'welcome' the stranger's arrival. As in every class, country or community, no group ever sees the world the same way and we discussed how the islanders might react differently to the man. Is he a poor thing who needs to be rescued? Is he a curiosity? Is he a threat? We each adopted an islander and took on their perspective f

What does storytelling software Twine have to offer young writers?

A fter a chance bit of Googling this week, I stumbled across Twine - an interactive storytelling platform for building text-based games. It is a platform with pot ential for developing narrative in our schools . ⌚ 6 minutes I have spent my summer reading. After spending lockdown in Thailand with a rapidly deleting selection of books (reading A Casual Vacancy was a last resort), coming back to a house of full bookshelves was a treat. It felt good for the soul to escape the worries of the present by slipping into another, fictional world whose problems were not my concern. I have also been playing a lot of computer games, revisiting many of the games that I enjoyed as a child: The Settlers , Civilisation , Frontier Elite , Rome Total War . If you're not a 1990s computer game fan then, no, you're not alone but please indulge me as I reminisce. This summer, with time on my hands, I started to think seriously about why it was I enjoy playing these games, and why they seem to

Search This Blog