In October 2019, I worked with a Year 2 class on a project about the English folk story of the Green Man. If you're not familiar with the story, the Green Man (or Jack in the Green as he is sometimes known) is a mythical creature who nutures the trees and the woods and entices unsuspecting people out of their homes and into the woods. A full suamry of the project will follow but as part of it, the children made a film. Here is the trailer for Green Man! The full movie is due in December 2019. Watch this space... Green Man -- Trailer #1

I'm currently in Cape Town working as part of a research project in primary schools in the city. The project is looking at the experiences of new migrant children to school. I'll write more about the project once it's complete but it has been great to act as a consultant supporting the research with advice on visual literacy and film-making. The project uses The Arrival by Shaun Tan as a way of getting the children involved to share their own experiences. I am also helping the children turn their ideas into a short film. This is the trailer I made with the children based on their idea about telling the story of a new child arriving at their school. All the footage was taken by the children!The finished movie will hopefully be ready soon. Watch this space!

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 ...

Hello teachers! Lights, camera, ACTION! This month’s newsletter is all about film and about how it can be used to inspire creative teaching and creative writing. Read on to see how I am using it with children in classrooms from Leeds to Cape Town, changing the way schools teach and how children think about themselves as storytellers. I have even included a free resource to help get you started using film to inspire your class. If you want to know more, I offer CPD training on using film to teach literacy for primary teachers in the UK and around the world. Click here or visit www.articulateeducation.co.uk to book it for your school! The Arrival: child migration in Cape Town ​​ One of the things that brings me to Cape Town this year is the chance to support a research project in one of the city’s primary schools. The project explores how child migrants to Cape Town are accommodated by the education system. Using innovative methods such as photography and The Arrival – a pictu...

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...

Ok, I know we are only half way through filming but I couldn’t resist making a quick poster for the movie! A lot of the work I do involves children filming or publishing their work. I think a fundamental part of developing children as authors or artists with a genuine sense of voice is that they get to see their work promoted, shared and celebrated. If you’re making a film for a real audience, then it needs to be promoted as a real movie. I wonder how much of a perception shift the impact of this has?  When you explain to a group of children that you are going to publish a book or make a film, one of the greatest challenges is convincing the children that you mean it – that their work really will get shared even if it is just locally in the school. This, I suppose, offers an insight into how they view their education. From past experiences, getting children to see themselves as authors requires an injection of confidence and when they see their work being shared publicly, ...

The film project got off to a flying start with the children at a primary school in Cape Town this afternoon. It was wonderful to be invited to work on this research project into migrant children’s perspectives on inclusion in schools. Last week, the lead researcher discussed inclusion with a group of six children from Grade 4 – a mixture of migrant and local children. To make this topic accessible, the researcher had used The Arrival by Shaun Tan: a wonderful picture book that follows the journey of a man and his family who leave their home to build a life in a new country; the story explores the challenges and surprises that await them. The book has no words and the fantastic illustrations make the book part graphic novel, part photograph album. Last week, the lead researcher worked with the children to take their own photographs around school to enable the children to identify things that showed that the school was including them (or not) in the life of the school. ...

Cape Town is a diverse city that I have been lucky enough to visit several times over the last few years. The landscape, the people, the culture all work together to reflect the rich variety of this city and this country. As the turbulent history of South Africa would suggest, this country’s society is out of balance: staggering economic inequalities are inescapable. But this is also a city with great energy and the place bristles with creative energy and promise – a power that if encouraged and harnessed can surely help drive this country economically, culturally and socially towards a greater sense of equality. Education obviously has a large part to play in developing the talents of the next generation of South Africans, both those born here and those who travel to the cape to find work and a better life.  On this trip to Cape Town, I’ll be working alongside a researcher from the UK who is researching with young migrant children in state primary schools to explore the...