Hello! 你好!    My name is Stefan Kucharczyk and I am an experienced primary school teacher, lecturer and writer based in Leeds (UK). I have always loved losing myself in stories: in books, films, computer games, theatre, lego and anything and everything else. But my real passion has always been writing. Now, I work with primary school children and teachers to support them in making writing an immersive, creative and fun experience. I am interested in the potential of creative, enquiry-based learning to change the way we think about education in primary schools (and education in general) and to help prepare young learners to live and flourish as literate citizens in an exciting world. I also work in Higher Education as a university lecturer and tutor. No, I am not an all-seeing expert with schemes of work under my arm, but I have experience, passion, imagination and the willingness to take a risk - all that you need to change the world. To book me for workshops, CPD, speaking ...

A few weeks ago, the Twitter algorithm fairy threw a discussion about creativity into my feed. I have a natural aversion to putting my hand into this kind of hornets' nest, but on this occasion I couldn't resist. The discussion that was playing out reflects the evidence that creativity is something teachers care about and see it as a skill to be valued in education, and yet it is still something misunderstood and misappropriated. It went something like this... A primary school teacher had posted to Twitter a picture of an art display in her classroom. See a snippet of the picture below. The display showed pictures of birds the children had painted in watercolours and was captioned with a comment to praise her class for their work. Not so, said Twitter. The birds are all identical: how is this going to develop creativity in children? Wrong, came the counter-argument: children in primary school need to be fluent in skills before they can attempt to be creative. ...

One of the most influential books I have read over the last few months is Open: how we'll work, live and learn in the future by musician, educator and fellow Leeds resident, David Price. If you haven’t come across it before, I can thoroughly recommend it.  In his book, David Price explores new trends in working and learning made possible by the internet and the rise of social media. There are several ideas from Open that have powerful implications for education and I will explore several of these on this blog in the next few months. One of the most important parts of being ‘open’ is about reciprocal sharing.  Over the last few years, I have been turning my ideas into buyable teaching resources available from my shop on the TES platform. I put together short and long planning prompts and Medium Term Planning documents for creative writing, literacy, and cross-curricular units of work.   Selling resources is a vital source of income to support my independent wo...

Hello teachers! With the number of ‘awareness’ days slightly overwhelming the calendar, it is most certainly forgivable if you’ve blanked them all out. May is full of them, by the way. While National Handwashing Day and International Dawn Chorus Day (5th and 7th of May respectively, if you have your diary to hand) might not get your pulse racing, one awareness worth being aware of is National Share a Story Month which runs throughout May. So, if you are looking for a perfect sharing-book to celebrate, look no further than The Willow Pattern Story by Allan Drummond, a beautiful take on the story of the famous Chinese pottery design. It is ideal for reading together, alone or using it for your literacy lessons. Scroll down for details on how to use The Willow Pattern Story to set your literacy lessons aflutter. Greater Depth in writing CPD – Pudsey schools away day – April 2018 I was delighted to be invited to present at the Pudsey Family of Schools away day last week. It was an opp...

This half term I have been teaching art with Year 1. Far from just being an art project, this work has shown how vital DT in helping children apply what they have learned in core subjects. For this art project, our topic has been the Chinese Dragon Boat festival, celebrated by Chinese communities around the world in early summer. We even had one here in Leeds! Our challenge has been to create a dragon boat that will float on water. The children drew and painted 3D dragon heads to attach to the scaly bodies that will make the floating part of the boat. The trickiest part was attaching the corks to the inside that would help the boats float on water. It took a lot of trial and error using a water tray to get it just right. The children did a fantastic job and have really enjoyed it. It just goes to show how vital art and DT are to children's learning - not only do they draw in creative aspects of learning, completing a project like this requires knowledge of science, math...

端午節快乐! Happy Dragon Boat Festival! Art class - Year 1 (age 5-6) Signalling the start of summer, Dragon Boat festival is a Chinese festival of colour, flavour, sound and action. An event that takes place all across China, other parts of the world also celebrate the festival with a boat race - including our fine city of Leeds which hosts a boat race on 24th June 2017. With my Year 1 class this half term we are exploring the sights and sounds of the festival starting with the beautiful Dragon Boat Flags that decorate towns and villages in the build up to the race before being awarded to the competing racers. Here are some examples of our dragon boat flags that we made this week. Using pre-cut paper triangles, the children cut the spiky trim from a strip of paper. We then practiced some Chinese characters that describe our racers - fast, good, strong, brave and the champions - before painting them onto the flags with slim brushes and black paint. A job well done. Next week.....

Macbeth Creative writing workshop, KS2 Macbeth is a blood-drenched, gory and spooky tale. To o gruesome for little ones? Apparently not! The Year 4 and 5 children I have been working with this half term have become completely immersed in the Scott ish play.  As well as getting the children to write short playscripts, developing the climactic s howdown between Macbeth and Macduff (more on this at a later date), my groups ha ve designed some concept posters for the play. The children chose a colou r and symbol that represented some aspect of the play (bloody red, royal purple, a black cat for the wi tches, a chess p iece for the king) and overlayed it with words that help tell the story. We used emulsion paint and big worn-out brushes (the ones at the back of the cu pboard that nobody uses...) to achieve a battle-worn, scratchy effect. Gory blood sp latters w ent dow n a treat to o! Here are some fine examples! Royal Shakespeare Company, take note! ...

Macbeth Creative Writing Workshop Week 1: Bard Banter Text: Macbeth, adapted by Leon Garfield. With the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death this weekend, I have taken the opportunity to introduce a little bit of bard banter into my creative workshops. Starting a writing and drama project on any of Shakespeare's plays can be a daunting task, but helping the children get to grips with some cutting Shakespearean language is a great place to start. It goes without saying that getting the chance to insult the teacher with some saucy, impish quips certainly helps loosen up the shy performers! Using the fabulous Shakespeare Insult Kit as a starting point, the children were quick to get to stuck into a little Elizabethan trash-talking. Here are some zingers: Wipe thy ugly face thou fishified, fat-kidneyed ratsbane!     Hark! Thou logger headed, earth-vexing hugger mugger! Lead apes in hell thou toad-faced, gorbellied flaxwench! Hark! Wipe thy ugly face thou goatis...

The Great Wave - Creative writing workshop, Year 6 Week 1: Vocabulary development Inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai's masterpiece The Great Wave , Year 6 are starting on a creative voyage to bring the iconic print to literary life! We spent some time poring over the features of painting: the spray, the wave, the boats and, well hidden, Mount Fuji. After reading an account of Ellen MacArthur's sailing voyages, we began to generate some cutting edge vocabulary to give our writing some sparkle. This was the process: Children labelled the features of the picture, including parts of the wave (crest, barrel, swell, lip) We chose personified verbs for the different features. 'Grabbing', 'scratching' and 'grasping' for the finger-like lip of the wave; 'screaming', 'slapping' and 'whistling' for the wind. The group selected similes for each of the features. The wind became 'a bellowing dragon', the boats w...

History Focus Week - Leeds primary school, Year 5 .  The Vikings - February 201 6 Bu ilding on the children's work on the Vikings during their hi sto ry topic wee k, I decided to put the rich vocabular y they had been learning to good use with these fantastic word-art portrait s.  We discussed the meaning of Viking runes and the children matched a n appropriate symbol to a n image : s tr ength with a horse, protection with a helmet , fire with a drag on.  The children charcoal - transferred an image onto a strip of pape r (their first time!) and then used the vocabulary to fill in the lines. As a set they look very effective! Visit the gallery to see more examples of thi s great w ork !  

George Lucas (yes mom, the guy who directed Star Wars) talks here about how the school system in America is obsessed with teaching the 'grammar' of communication and how the arts, drama, cinema and music are labelled as 'creative fun'. He's spot on. ARTiculate workshops help children understand how ideas can be communicated in ways additional to writing. Click here to see the creative literacy workshops I offer.     

Inspired by a visit to the cinema, this week's bulletin features creative ideas for Shakespeare's epic Macbeth by Leon Garfield. This is taken from a collection called Shakespeare Stories and is a book I remember knocking around our house when I was a little boy! It's brilliant though and easily my favourite retelling of the classic plays. If you try any of the ideas I'd love to see the work your children produce. A  'Have You Tried?'  ideas sheet for Macbeth can be found  here .  To request this in pdf format, please join the mailing list by clicking  here  and sending me your details. ------------------------------ ------------------------------ -------------------------- Book a FREE taster workshop for your school   ------ ------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- This half term I am offering FREE creative literacy taster workshops to primary schools in Leeds. If you ...

This week's bulletin features creative ideas for Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. This spooky tale has lots of unnerving qualities: Victorian sepia photos, objects that seem to move around from picture to picture and , oh yeah, a huge slathering hound on the prowl. Perfect for murky autumnal weather. If you try any of the ideas I'd love to see the work your children produce. To request this in pdf format, please join the mailing list by clicking  here  and sending me your details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Black Dog by Levi Pinfold -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sinister, murky tone of this book is ideal for gloomy, autumnal weather.  Buried deep in the snowy forest, a large beast is prowling around the house giving the Hope family the scare of their lives. But all is not as it seems in this spooky tale. Is it really a really a giant be...

Hello! World Literacy Day returns on 13th October as part of the World Education Games where children across the world will be celebrating language and literature. If your school is not ready for this global event, look no further. ARTiculate’s creative literacy workshops have had a proven impact on developing children’s writing. Using drama, discussion and art to stimulate exciting thinking, learners big and small have been amazed by the outstanding artwork and superb progress in writing my workshops can deliver. No gimmicks – just innovative ideas taught well by a qualified and experienced primary school teacher. For World Literacy Day , I have two exciting and engaging workshops to offer that include building birdcages, drawing with words and developing original ideas for writing that will get the children raring to go! Workshop 1: The Birdman - poetry and birdcage building ​ Workshop 2: The Arrival - fiction and creative drawing ​ To request these worksho...

Get your new year off to a flyer with Anthony Browne's excellent The Shape Game . The perfect starting point for short, simple activities to get your class talking, discussing, drawing and working together. A  'Have You Tried?'  ideas sheet for The Shape Game can be found  here .  The Shape Game  by Anthony Browne The Shape Game is all you really need in order to understand the magic of Anthony Browne. On a family trip to the Tate Britain art gallery in London,  Anthony Browne gives us insight into his love of art and his childhood discovery of visual jokes and lends us a launch pad from which to analyse paintings, decode symbols and interpret art. In brief: Have you tried?  Ideas for talking and thinking : Interpret and discuss meaning in art and look for symbols in paintings. Ideas for writing : Collaborative written interpretations of famous artworks.  Ideas for art : Play the shape game like Anthony Browne ...

Sorry to wake you from your slumber, teachers, but before you close that heavy-lidded eye, roll over and drift back into holiday dreams, take a sneaky look at this week's bulletin with wonderful ideas for teaching creative fiction. This week's resources are for the fantastic picture book Wolves by Emily Gravett.  Consider your inspiration for your first literacy unit of the year well and truly ticked off. Well done you. Now back to sleep...   A  'Have You Tried?'  ideas sheet for Wolves can be found  here .  Wolves  by Emily Gravett This magical book is a great example of how fiction and non-fiction can be combined in a text. We follow the journey of rabbit's imagination as he immerses himself in a new book about a bunny's most feared predator, the wolf. As we consider where his reading and his imaginings meet, this book is the ideal launch pad for a discussion about the very nature of imagination. This might sound a bit on the compl...

This superb artwork was created by a group of 8 and 9 year olds at a primary school in Leeds. The artwork is the children's counter piece to their creative writing based on the book The Island by Armin Greder. This workshop ran over six weeks and taught children the skills required to be a creative and imaginative author and illustrator. All children who took part in the workshop increased their writing attainment by at least 1 sub-level. If you would like your school to take part in similar work, please click here  and ask for information on creative workshops.

These excellent drawings were completed in our final workshop today. Some of these snapshot images are aspects of the book's main illustrations whilst some are taken from various doodles that are scattered throughout the pages. Using black ink, detail was added using the different shading techniques we have practised. Colour was applied later using watered acrylics. The children demonstrated not only their progress as artists but also their confidence in selecting shading patterns. Great work!

This week's bulletin is inspired by a wonderful, charity shop chance-find picture book: The Whale Song by Dyan Sheldon. Here are some great ideas for you to use with this text. A  'Have You Tried?'  ideas sheet for The Whale's Song can be found  here .  The Whale's Song  by Dyan Sheldon and Gary Blythe This modest little book might not look like much on first glance, but it is a treasure trove of starting points for English and art. Lily, a little girl living with two elderly relatives, hears a tale about the whales that visit their shore. Infused with dreams and memories, the story explores the girl's imaginings and the hazy illustrations give the book a detached, ethereal quality.    In brief: Have you tried?  Ideas for talking and thinking : explore the characters' perspectives on the whales through drama and discussion. Are they magical beasts or an economic resource? Included this week are resources for character d...

In this workshop, I am using art as a means of developing a sense of character perspective. Our artwork looks at 'the people' and how they might react to the intruder. The art and writing are different accounts of the same event. W hen used in the right way, art can enhance great writing even further. Creating art that speaks to writing Week 5 "If an illustration only repeats what the text is already saying then either the text or the illustration is superfluous... The pictures carry the story on their own."  Armin Greder, The Great Bear (1999) It is always warming to hear an enthusiastic teacher describe a great book as a 'goldmine'. I find it comforting to imagine them burrowing through the themes, vocabulary and ideas to take their classes to the heart of a book. Teaching that aims to dig below the surface can immerse children in new worlds and, almost inevitably, produces great writing.  Another rich vein of creative possibility for literacy...