Last month we announced our World Book Day 2020 selection. And this is the second in a series of blogs looking at how to utilise these books in the classroom (if you missed our first one on ‘The Rainbow Fish’ you can find it here).

This week we are taking a look at The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, one of the wonderful options for our Story Explorer drama workshops.

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

In Part 3 of our Guide to Teaching Shakespeare, we look at getting children up on their feet and performing the bard’s work. From character statues to character creation, here are some exercises and activities that you can use in the classroom, differentiated for different ages.

You’ve told, read, re-read and re-told your story. Everyone knows what’s happening. (Finally!) Great.

Safe with an understanding of the overall story from a narrative version, it’s time to transfer your students’ knowledge to a script version and discover how Shakespeare really brought his stories to life.

Our advice when it comes to teaching Shakespeare in primary schools is to tell a story, break it down and get physical with it to bring the drama to life. In this blog series, we break down each of these points in turn to provide ideas and suggestions for how you can deliver them in our own classroom. To get us started, Part 1 focuses on telling the story.

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.

How do I teach a five year old to get inside the head of a character?
How do I get a class of children to think about their physicality and use that to present a different emotion/mood/age
How can I encourage them to speak clearly?

Full disclosure: There is no one, immediate answer to any of these questions. Instead, there are different components of drama which can be combined, structured and explored accordingly, session-by-session, to aid your students in creating the answers themselves. Plus, it’s super fun!

Ease yourself into drama teaching by making it a regular part of your usual classroom activity first - and not an individual session at all.

Find or create appropriate opportunities in your day where you can spend approximately 20 minutes utilising drama activities in the classroom. This introduces a new concept to a class, gauges their likes and dislikes, and steadily builds your own confidence in delivery.

As with anything new, give yourself time to research, understand and prepare before jumping into your first drama session. My three instructions to you:

• Get involved

• Get online

• Get ready

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’.

All the world’s a stage… including your classroom! Do you know your up stage from your down stage? Your Shakespeare from your Stanivlaski? No matter where your drama knowledge is at, this blog series will guide you on your way to delivering your best drama sessions! In Part 1 we discuss why teach drama, plus there’s a handy resource pack of drama games for you to download!

Welcome to Part 5 of the West End in Schools Guide to Teaching Dance. So far we’ve covered why we should teach dance at all, the 5 simple steps for how to teach dance, the process for creating choreography with your students, and lastly the choreographic devices that will help you and your students create. This final piece is all about tips for actually delivering a session.

After going through the process of creating dance in Part 3 it’s time to talk about choreographic devices. Choreographic devices are the tools we use to manipulate movement in order to enhance, exaggerate and embody actions. They’re a great way to give a class or a group of children ownership over their dance. Here we have 11 devices, some which are more suitable for EYFS and KS1, and some for KS2.

Been teaching pre-set dances for a while now? Rinsed your repertoire? Is your class itching to create something of their own? Are you?! Then let’s do it. Let’s create. Let’s choreograph. (It’s easier than you might think.)

Welcome to Part 2 of our Guide to Teaching Dance! In Part 1 we discussed the benefits of teaching dance in the first place. Here in Part 2 I’m going to talk all about how to teach dance. A good way to approach this is through 5 simple steps…

Are you a dancing queen? Can you conga round the classroom? Are you a master of mambo? Two-step or tango?! Whatever your style, or potential lack thereof - do not fear! In this blog series we’re going to cover all the steps that will help you deliver dance in your school to the very best of your ability.

This year is the centenary of the end of the First World War and 100 years since the Armistice was signed on 11th November 2018. To mark the occasion we created Poetry and Poppies, an interactive workshop that combines poetry, drama, and history for the whole primary school. We spoke to Abi, the creator of the workshop, to find out exactly how the workshop came about and what its challenges were.

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.