National contacts
These organisations offer a variety of ways to support teachers, including inset and training for teachers in the areas of creative writing, literacy and poetry; finding a local writer to work in your school and running education projects in schools and in the community.
Apples & Snakes - http://www.applesandsnakes.org/
Apples & Snakes promote performance poetry, support artists and provide poets to work in schools around London and offer training to teachers to develop their confidence and creativity in teaching poetry. Sessions can be tailored to suit the schools’ needs. Teachers’ resources can also be found on their website. Please contact Will on for more details.
Authors Abroad - http://www.authorsabroad.com
Authors Abroad provides school visits throughout the UK, using a hand-picked selection of leading UK Authors, Poets & Illustrators. From storytellers to rapping poets, literature walks, wacky illustrators, and high-flying author presentations, their mission is to provide the highest quality inspirational school visits to enhance and support the quality of education provided in school.
Booktrust - http://www.booktrust.org.uk
Booktrust runs national gifting programmes, giving millions of free books to babies, children and teenagers every year. It also runs campaigns such as Children’s Book Week and the Children’s Laureate and administers a number of book prizes and awards that celebrate the best books for readers of all ages. The website is also a great resource for finding out about new books, reviews and competitions.
Centre for Literacy in Primary Education - http://www.clpe.co.uk
The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education is an educational centre that provides training courses and consultancy for schools and teachers, teaching assistants, other educators, parents and families in London and nationally as well as classroom-based research and development and publications.
Electronic Poetry Center - http://epc.buffalo.edu/
This website houses a huge free resource for E-poetry - language and poetics that exploit and work with digital media such as Flash and hypertext as well as artists working with text, poets working with installation, projects responding to landscape, book arts and much more. Although based in the US, this website is just as relevant to UK teachers, artists and practitioners.
If:book - http://www.bookfutures.blogspot.com/
If:book is dedicated to exploring the future of the book as our culture moves from printed page to networked screen, and the potential of new media for creative readers and writers. There are lots of interesting links to digital writing projects.
Learning through Landscapes
Learning through Landscapes is an organisation dedicated to making the most of your outside space and has a wealth of ideas that could help you to create an outside writing space as well as increasing learning and play opportunities and improving your environment. Please see http://www.ltl.org.uk/schools_and_settings/ for more details.
National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) - http://www.nate.org.uk
NATE provides publications and training to support the teaching of English in schools as well as literature reviews, an online forum for English teachers and classroom resources.
National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) - http://nawe.co.uk
NAWE supports creative writing in all genres and in all community and education settings and produces online resources, publications and training events. It also features the Artscape directory - http://www.artscape.org.uk - a national directory of writers who work in schools.
National Centre for Language and Literacy - http://www.ncll.org.uk
The Centre supports teachers, parents and governors in a wide range of ways - through a unique collection of resources; publications; an extensive programme of courses and conferences; ongoing research; and a membership scheme designed to meet the needs of individual schools. Schools can find authors, illustrators and storytellers for school visits and projects via the NCLL UK-wide database. Contact Pam Brown on for more details.
National Literacy Association - http://www.nla.org.uk
The National Literacy Association campaigns for children’s literacy, operates project work in schools and produces useful publications to support teachers from foundation to Key Stage 4.
National Literacy Trust - http://www.literacytrust.org.uk
The National Literacy Trust links home, school and the wider community to inspire learners and create opportunities for everyone. They support those who work with learners through their innovative programmes, information and research, and bring together key organisations to lead literacy promotion in the UK.
Penn Sound - http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/
US-based PennSound is the University of Pennsylvania’s archive of the largest collection of poetry sound files on the Internet. It offers a huge variety of digital recordings of poems, free to download and use. Free recordings of poets reading their own work and interviews with poets are ideal to use in the classroom.
Perform a poem - http://performapoem.lgfl.org.uk/
Website for primary schools hosted by London Grid for Learning that safely hosts video footage of children performing their own poetry. There are lots of fun and useful resources for teachers around writing and performing poems, examples of existing poems to perform and video tips from Michael Rosen on performing poetry. The site allows schools to upload their own videos of children reading poetry in an e-safe environment.
Poetryclass - http://www.poetryclass.net/
Poetryclass, run by the Poetry Society, is the solution for teachers wanting to bring poetry alive in the classroom. A training team of poets, all of whom are highly experienced with work in schools, is available to work with teachers to overcome their problems and concerns with teaching poetry. There is also a very useful online poetry classroom on the website with lots of resources and lesson plans for Key Stages 1 to 4. Inset can be provided throughout England. Contact for more information.
Shakespeare’s Globe - http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/
Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank is a unique international resource dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare’s work and the playhouse for which he wrote, through the connected means of performance and education. Globe Education has a schools programme that runs alongside performances and also offers online resources.
Spread the Word - http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/
Spread the Word provides bespoke workshops and training in schools for children and teachers in London. With a focus on the writer, their workshops, one-to-one advice surgeries, mentoring schemes and other activities use established professional writers to develop writers’ skills. Contact Jenneba for more details:
Teachit - http://www.teachit.co.uk/
Teachit is a site created for teachers by teachers with over 11,000 pages of downloadable worksheets, lesson plans, audio materials and ICT tools. The site also encompasses http://www.teachitworld.com for ELT resources, http://www.teachitprimary.co.uk with resources for the Foundation year to Year 6 and http://www.citizenshipteacher.co.uk for Citizenship teachers.
The Arvon Foundation - http://www.arvonfoundation.org/p11.html
Arvon works with schools, colleges and youth groups to provide courses that ignite a lifelong love of imaginative writing and help to develop the creative voice of each participant in a uniquely collective environment. They work closely with teachers to tailor courses for each specific group, but all courses follow the same basic format as for all adult courses. They match experienced, professional writers to the requirements of your group, in any writing genre and across all forms. Courses are residential. Arvon also offer a Writing Room to showcase the work of the under-18 writers who visit their houses to write. Arvon also offer subsidised writing courses for teachers.
The English Association - http://www.le.ac.uk/engassoc/
The aim of the English Association is to further knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of the English language and its literatures and to foster good practice in its teaching and learning at all levels. It does this by encouraging the study of English language and literature; by means of conferences, lectures and publications; by fostering the discussion of methods of teaching English of all kinds and by responding to national issues. It offers publications and conferences for teachers and prizes and awards for young people’s writing.
The National Trust - Learning Outside the Classroom
When working within the confines of the classroom, and taking into account the increasing impact of virtual learning environments, it seems as vital as ever to take your pupils outdoors as part of their overall education and development. More that just fulfilling a curriculum learning outcome, a visit provides exercise, fresh air and a shared sense of place and wonder that will impact upon young people’s values and interests. Visiting a National Trust location can be a fantastic focus and inspiration for a writing project - see here for more details.
The Poetry Book Society - http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/
The PBS is an online poetry bookshop with a good selection of poetry for children and some related competitions.
UBUWeb - http://www.ubu.com/
UBUWeb is acknowledged as the definitive online source for avant-garde, visual, concrete and sound poetry and features many artists who work across art forms. It encompasses hundreds of artists, hundreds of gigabytes of free sound files, books, texts and videos.
In your area
