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.....

Buy my creative literacy resources for free by using the discount code JUNE-OFFERS at my shop on TES online. Sale ends 30 June 2017! Visit my shop at www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/articulate_education or click here and follow the link.  Small print... - voucher is worth £3 ($3.97) as are most of my resources - first time buyers only - see www.tes.com for full details

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 !  

ARTiculate Bulletin wc 22.2.16 Have you tried Flotsam by David Wiesner Buy this book! Image copyright by the owners.  This is a strange book; the good kind of strange. The sort of book that will keep you and the children puzzling and poring over it in the hunt for hidden meaning and the intricate details you almost certainly missed the first ten times you read it. Almost completely wordless, children of any age or ability will find this a stimulating and thought-provoking starting point.  If you try any of the ideas I'd love to see the work your children produce. A  'Have You Tried?'  ideas sheet for  Flotsam  can be found  here .  To request this in pdf format, please join the mailing list by clicking  here  and sending me your details.

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...

"Raised pupil's writing by at least 1 sub-level - developed their ability to apply knowledge. Hopefully we will see ARTiculate in our school again!" A Howdle, Literacy Coordinator You're entering the final stretch now, everybody! Well done! But before you hang your whistle up for the summer, there is a way to get a head start on next year by guaranteeing your children's writing will get off to a creative flyer. ARTiculate is launching a new creative literacy workshop that includes discussion and debate, drama, writing and art: a dead cert to get your new class buzzing! Our new workshop 'Human Zoo' is based on the book Zoo by Anthony Browne. Turning the world on its head in true Anthony Browne style, we ask how would the animals see the strange behaviour of the human visitors? Indeed, who really belong in the cage? Not only does this workshop meet the National Curriculum objectives for literacy, it fulfills the art ones too. Pretty nifty, eh? By ...