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. 

This summer we have been introducing all the books featuring in our World Book Day 2020 Story Explorer workshops. We wanted to share with you why we love these books as well as five of our favourite classroom activities to accompany them. This week is our last (but by no means least!) book in the list by author, comedian and TV personality David Walliams.

In this blog series we have been looking at classroom activities that compliment our Story Explorer World Book Day 2020 selection. So far we have looked at The Rainbow Fish, The Tiny Seed, Stick Man, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda and Fortunately, the Milk. This week we are focusing on a classic tale that follows three brave children on their childhood adventures!

It may be the middle of the summer holidays, but our minds are on World Book Day (7 months and counting…). If you’re short of something to read this summer, head to our World Book Day 2020 book list for inspiration. Other the summer term we have been sharing some of our favourite activities to go alongside our Story Explorer book selection. We are sure that our book in focus this week will make you laugh out loud no matter what your age…

Earlier this term we shared our book choices for World Book Day 2020. The power of a good book selection is something the protagonist of this week’s focus story understands! Our previous blog explored Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, and this week we are looking at another Dahl classic…

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!

Welcome to the third in our blog series introducing our Story Explorer World Book Day 2020 selection! So far we’ve talked about ideas for The Rainbow Fish and The Tiny Seed. This week it’s the turn of another renowned children’s author Julia Donaldson and her much loved book Stick Man!

Last week we announced our World Book Day 2020 selection for both our Bringing Books to Life dance workshops and our Story Explorer drama workshops. This is the first in a series of blogs taking a look at our selected books, what makes them so wonderful, and what activities you can do to explore the book in your classroom. First up we have The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

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’.

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!

When people think about the ways in which drama can help children, the most frequently talked about benefit of little ones pretending to be vikings, fairies or the lobster in the nativity is probably that it helps improve their confidence. But there are other ways too, from familiarising the unknown, to developing creativity, to encouraging empathy.

At West End In Schools we have lists (long, long lists) of poems we love, but we’ve whittled it down to just five, and this year we’ve been working on transforming these five fantastic rhymes into specially created drama workshops.

To celebrate Roald Dahl Day and the 102nd anniversary of one of the most phizz-whizzing writers of all time, we have compiled a list of our top five easy ways to get creative with Roald Dahl.