It has been a while since I last posted on this blog but it does not mean that I have not been busy. Since January 2018, I have been studying for a Masters by Research at Leeds Beckett University - I handed it in last month (fingers crossed for a good mark!). The research was a critical reflection on my transition from a full-time primary school teacher to independent teaching consultant in July 2014. It looks at how that transition has changed the way I feel about being a teacher.  I’ll spare you the full 15,000 words, but it is enough to say that this study helped me, for the first time, to begin to untangle some of the complex and difficult feelings I have about my time as a full-time teacher. For a long time I have tried to present that transition as a choice, as a promotion almost whereby I put aside my work to follow a specialist interest in creative writing. A noble cause. While there are elements of truth in this, it is far from the whole story. If I am honest, I fo...

Hello teachers! Happy half term to you all. You’re nearly over the line! As you roll into that post-SATs-practising-sports-day-empty-out-your-trays time of year, there is no better time to experiment. With that in mind, take your class for a magical browse in Ross MacKenzie’s brilliant The Nowhere Emporium , a place of secrets and wonders. Ideal for free-flowing creative writing for all of Key Stage 2 and the perfect starting point for some exciting art and drama. Scroll down for details on how to use The Nowhere Emporium with your class. Harris Burdick: the case file Last month, as part of a CPD course for primary leaders, I lead a workshop on creative writing that explored Chris Van Allsburg’s intriguing picture book, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick . After discovering a mysterious letter by Chris Van Allsburg, teachers were asked to write part of a story linked to the Harris Burdick illustrations. Their writing has been passed onto the relevant authorities and has been ...

A lovely way to wrap up the filming today at the primary school in Cape Town. Following yesterday’s session where we focused our imaginary migrant’s first day at school – an unfriendly, unwelcoming place – today we looked on the bright side: what would a positive, friendly school look like? Me filming on our beautiful set! After yesterday’s filming where the researcher and I had modelled a lot of ideas and techniques for the group, I was hoping that the children would get more of a chance to take the lead today. I hoped that this independence would be both in front of and behind the camera. We started off the session by discussing what they could remember from the previous day’s conversation - about what we had imagined might happen to the boy. Making a film had seemed a bit of an abstract process to them to begin with so I hoped that by refreshing their memory with their ideas, the children would see how these ideas correlated into the actual film. We then sat down to wa...

Star Wars: Return of the Shadow Saber (2017)   The Star Wars saga continues with Star Wars: The Return of the Shadow Saber produced by ARTiculate Education and Trinity Vision.  In this continuation of the sci-fi epic, the Sith, the Jedi and a group of vile bounty hunters are on a quest to reclaim the legendary Shadow Saber - a weapon of unspeakable power. Who will get their hands on it first and claim the ultimate power in the galaxy? This film was written, designed and performed by twelve children from Little London Primary School and Pudsey Lowtown Primary School, Leeds. May the force be with you!

The Island - Trailer (2017)   On the day the man arrived, the lives of the islanders were changed forever. This video was the culmination of an ARTiculate Education creative writing project with two Year 5 classes in Leeds that explored the issues of immigration, identity and belonging in modern Britain. If you would like this workshop in your school, email me at articulateeducation@gmail.com and let me know. The Island movie will wash ashore in September 2017 - enjoy the trailer!

Summer is here again and so too is the Art Exchange - a community art project run by local artists in Pudsey, West Yorkshire. I have been working at Pudsey Lowtown this year as a collaborative English consultant and art teacher and this exhibition was the perfect opportunity to display some of the fantastic art work created by children at the school. We even had three winners! A third place prize and two special commendations. Well done to those children! But prizes aside, this was the perfect way to end a year's worth of art teaching - the end of a process; and the idea of process is central to the way I have tried to teach art. In what seems a growing trend, many schools choose to showcase art by holding a Creative Week or similar - a one week art frenzy where children take daily art lessons to develop their skills. Whilst it is great to see schools celebrating art by awarding it special focus, this approach is usually borne out of the lack of time to teach art regularl...

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...

Courtesy of the media wizards at Leeds Trinity University's Trinity Vision, this is the first teaser trailer for the Star Wars film scripted, designed and starring twelve fantastic primary school children from two of my Leeds writing groups. Enjoy and may the Force be with you!

How do you craft a story for an audience? How can you encourage children to begin to think of themselves as authors rather than children in a literacy lesson? Key questions for teaching creative writing in primary schools and this week I discussed these ideas with a group of Year 5 children as we wrote the openings to our Star Wars stories. The children agreed that a quick pace was important to writing and adventure story. Short sentences, using powerful verbs, limited descriptions - all things that help absorb the reader in a whirlwind of action. What was trickier was knowing how to 'craft' the story for a reader who hasn't seen the planning process. How do we reveal just enough about a character, a place, a quest etc to root the reader in the story but keep them interested by what is NOT said? I call these 'suggestives' - how you suggest something to a reader without telling them. The origin of reading for inference that is taught in KS2, it is essential...

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...

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away a young warrior discovers a lost temple that will change everything.... This is the context for a Star Wars writing workshop that began this week with a class of Year 5 children. Drawing on their ability to think creatively, their understanding of how to craft an exciting adventure story and the Force (obvs), this week the children began to draw out story maps outlining how their adventure will unfold. First we jotted down key questions to be answered: is the warrior a hero or a villain? what will they discover? what will stand in their way? What will they learn about themselves on the journey? Some of their ideas have been terrific - especially the understanding that a great adventure story needs to have thrills and spills, a gripping opening scene and (mild) peril! Star Wars is such an excellent vehicle for engaging reluctant writers in the classroom. They all want to shape a well known story that they love, there is lot...

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.....

A few weeks ago, in a university not far away 12 primary school children teamed up with Trinity Vision media department at Leeds Trinity University for an epic film making project. The task: to write, script and film a new Star Wars film in four days. No pressure. After devising several brilliant ideas for an exciting story plot, the children settled on an adventure quest to find a lost legend (no spoilers, sorry....) featuring merciless bounty hunters, an army of wicked Sith lords as well as heroes of the lightside, the brave Jedi Knights. The children made costumes, masks, lightsabers and even robot armour with the help of the university students and staff. After choreographing the epic battles, perfecting the script and rehearsing their lines, it was off to the woods to film it under the expert guidance of the Council of Elders at Trinity Vision. The children arrive for filming! The project was an excellent success. The children's fantastic hard work a...

Enjoyed a great visit to Anfield Primary School this morning - a lovely school surrounded by beautiful hills and forests in Hong Kong's New Territories.Was great to meet some of their staff and discuss potential plans for the future. Watch this space!

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...

Course title: Becoming a DIY Writer by Stefan Kucharczyk Venue: Pudsey Lowtown Primary School, Leeds Monday 5th September 2016 Forget the back-to-school, doom and gloom Facebook memes, the start of a new term is a chance to bounce around new ideas and get back to being creative (even if it doesn't seem like that at 7am in the morning).  What better way to get started than spending time discussing ideas for writing with the wonderful staff at Pudsey Lowtown Primary in Leeds. I was asked to deliver a teacher training session focused on embedding the writing process, especially how to get children in a position to write and how to help them edit and redraft their work afterwards. The school are embarking on a new direction with their literacy planning this half term, using picture books as inspiration for getting children acting, talking and writing. To prepare them, we looked at ways to unlock the mysteries of Armin Greder's chilling tale, The Island.  ...

Turn your most wayward apprentices from scruffy-lookin’ nerf herders into Jedi Masters with this creative writing and illustration workshop. Creative writing workshop -- six sessions -- fiction EPISODE IV: THE WRITING BEGINS (ONE STEP AT A TIME...) *all spellings are the children's originals! Before they were to start writing their drafts, I set the group some short writing tasks: one short piece describing the setting and two pieces to describe the main characters that appeared in their story. We watched the first twenty minutes of Episode VI and discussed the different features of the settings. What would it be like to be in the desert of Tatooine? What would you see there? What would the Death Star be like? What could you hear, smell, see? I wrote a short description as an example which included some model sentences. The children analysed it and then used it to help structure their own descriptions. Here is one example for a story set in a junkyard.... This fier...