We have recently received some very exciting post, which left the whole team sporting a Cheshire Cat’s grin! The lovely Year 6 children from Clarendon Junior School have sent us handwritten letters, giving us their feedback on our workshop with them in March.

To celebrate Lunar New Year we spoke with Liz Chi Yen Liew, composer of our Chinese Zodiac Dance Workshop based on The Great Race.

Here she demonstrates how the instruments are used in the music, and speaks about her inspiration and approach when composing the piece.

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a good start to the new school term - mince pies and wrapping gifts already feels like a distant memory doesn’t it? But as one good thing comes to an end an equally exciting one steps into its place. There’s plenty to be looking forward to this spring. For example… 

Here’s the final two movement activities in this blog series to get the maths in your classroom moving! These are two of my personal favourites (best ‘til last) so I hope you enjoy them, too!

Did you enjoy the previous Math and Movement blog entry? Looking for ADDITIONAL activities GREATER THAN the ones before? Read on to find out more - MINUS the puns. (I’ll stop.)

Looking for ways to merge maths with movement? Of course you are! Check out our tried and tested activity suggestions to help you get your Maths moving, with a shake, and a shout, and even a bit of a boogie. And don’t miss out on the developments for EYFS, KS1 and KS2.

The Festival of Lights is fast approaching! And we have had the joy of touring schools across the country this month to help primary school children explore one of the most important stories behind Diwali - The Ramayana. An epic tale of good triumphing over evil, it is a story that can be traced back to 500 BCE (that’s a LONG time ago!) and it’s as much loved today as it was back then.

When a child opens a poetry book and look at the pages, what do they see? Rarely do they see uniformity. They see words and letters making all different shapes across a page. Some short, some long. Some with rhyme and some without. Some poems even become the illustration of what they are describing. 

The new school year is upon us! And we are excited about what this year holds.

From the dancing our way through Roald Dahl Day to taking pause to reflect with poetry on Armistice Day - there’s plenty to get involved with.

Roald Dahl Day isn’t just a time to celebrate a great author. It is a day to celebrate everything Dahl’s stories teach: creativity, perseverance and fun!

How useful is your PPA time?

For teachers, it’s a much-needed chance to step out of the classroom and to get on with planning and marking. But what about the children? How useful is it for them?

If we want children to grow up to believe they can do anything and that they are not confined to certain activities which fit within gendered stereotypes, then we need to start changing how we talk about subjects like dance. Instead of worrying about the preconceptions of dance, let's take a look at some of the incredible benefits participating in dance can have for young boys.

This year we have developed a series of complimentary CPD sessions for primary school teachers. Each workshop guides teachers through a series of tools and techniques they can apply in their own classrooms. Throughout the sessions we invite teachers to ask questions, to share their practise and experience. There are a few common questions that teachers ask about running their own performing arts lessons in their class.

“A smile is the universal language of kindness” - William Arthur Ward

A smile is our body’s way to communicate joy without language, much like a wave to say hello or a shake of the head to mean no thank you.

Without even thinking about it we are capable of communicating with so many people without uttering a single word.

Each year we have the joy of whittling down our World Book Day selection to just five phenomenal books for our Bringing Books to Life dance workshops. This year we selected five books, each with their own unique set of benefits for primary school students. We wanted to share with you why we love these books so much, and also some fun ways to explore them back in the classroom.

Inspiring children to bring books to life with dance is one of our favourite things to do at West End in Schools. Just last week we gathered some of the country’s most talented dancers in one room, to work through the choreography for our Bringing Books to Life dance workshops in primary schools. We spoke to a few of our regular West End in Schools choreographers to find out more about their work with us to inspire children to dance.

We are visiting schools across the country to celebrate Chinese New Year with a dance workshops based on “The Great Race”, the story behind the Chinese Zodiac. Not planned a dance workshop with us this year? Well fear not, there’s still plenty of ways you can get your class involved in celebrating!

Watching a narrative dance piece introduces to children what it means to communicate with their bodies, faces and gestures. It demonstrates how ‘dialogues’ can be shared without any spoken word, and how that itself may bring about whole new dynamics to ‘conversation’.

So last term you read our Guide to Teaching Dance series and you’ve found your groove? Thought so! Well, to help you along this year we’ve put together a 2019 Dance Calendar! Providing a year round excuse for getting the whole class up and jiving! 

Books provide young people a window into a new world, they unshackle the imagination and promote the thought that anything is possible. World Book Day, is on a mission to give every child or young person a book of their own. It is a celebration of books, authors, illustrators and imagination!