On a recent visit to Toxteth in Liverpool I was lucky to meet teachers working with children who needed extra support and guidance due to very difficult circumstances. These children were all unable to cope in mainstream schools but within the Sonas environment ( Sonas is greek for happiness ) they make real progress.

Sonas is linked to the main school and working with all the staff was a real pleasure.

I look forward to hearing about the progress of this wonderful initiative...

I worked in this lovely school near Southampton and had a fantastic time. The children worked really hard and came up with wonderful ideas.
Just before the afternoon session I was treated to a performance on the kettle drums - the year 6 were so confident and talented - wow...

There is an outside classroom area being constructed which will be a inspiring venue for story telling and drama activities based on PTM!

I am looking forward to working in the school again and seeing the developments come to life!

Thank you to Mike Bainbridge, the Headteacher, for inviting me to work at Titchfield.

The inspiration project took place at the Holy Trinity and St Silas school in Camden. I worked with an artist - Nathalie Frost and Year 4 and 5. The theme of the project was Water and we wanted to use this theme to investigate Poetry, Image and Sound. The first task was to inspire the children to write some poetry. I used PTM with various watery pictures and sounds - yr 4 had one picture and one sound while Yr 5 had two contrasting pictures and sounds. The results were stunning. The next stage Nathalie worked with groups of children to create enormous vibrant paintings based on their words. I worked on investigating the sounds of water and linking these sounds to the words they had written.
The sounds and words were all mapped out and the children began to think of symbols that could represent these sounds and words.
These symbols then became the basis for composition and more huge paintings.
By the end of the week the children were performing their paintings! Reading their poems. Composing new sounds and much more.
It was a fantastic week and everyone got so much out of it. All the children were so motivated and had so much fun. One boy came up to me after one of the days and said he had had "the best day in school ....ever!"
It was amazing to think that out of poetry came so much more - the children had a real reason to write
and loved making their words shine.
I hope to be able to put up some pictures of the artwork alongside the poetry soon.
Many thanks to Annie Williams, the head teacher at the school and to Nathalie for an unforgettable week.

I had the pleasure of meeting and working with over 50 deputy head teachers from the Bury area at their annual conference on the 22nd May. They were all open to the ideas and enjoyed trying them out themselves. The compositions in the afternoon were excellent.

Schools in that area are lucky to have such dedicated and fun loving management!

I look forward to hearing about work they do in their schools and will post any examples here.

Thank you to everyone for making my stay such an enjoyable one.

I had a great time working with the year 2 children of Burton End Primary school in Haverhill. The children had 3 pictures with sounds on the opening,build up and problem branches. They planned each section and came up with some excellent ideas. Even at this young age the children were able to map effectively and discuss their ideas to generate more complex ones.
Thank you to all the children and staff at the school! I look forward to hearing about and seeing the finished results.

I am visiting Burton End school in Haverhill next week and was looking through some old notes. I came across these quotes from the Year 4 class after a creative writing session. I think they speak for themselves!


"Playing the music was wonderful."
"I enjoyed the dancing - it made me think more."
"I think the map will help us with our work."
"It makes work a lot more fun!"
"I enjoyed the lovely calm music on the laptop."
"I liked it when we made up our own poems."
"I really enjoyed the dancing,poetry and learning - it will help us when we are stuck and it will help us improve."
"I have learnt that you can put ideas on a sheet and make sentences out of them."

If you collect comments from the children about using Picture the Music let me know!

This film was made in Holy Trinity and St Silas Primary school in Camden and features a variety of ways to engage and inspire boys to write. All too often I hear from boys that they do not see the point of writing or that it is boring.

I was happy to take part in the film(All about the boys), using Picture the Music. The film shows the response of a year 6 class. They all had a wonderful time and produced some stunning work.

Other people involved in the film include a journalist and an actor. I am not sure where the film will be available to see but when I find out I will let you know.

I had a fantastic day in the beautiful setting of Borwick Hall up in Lancashire on Friday. I was working with the staff of Christchurch Primary school and a few other head teachers from schools in the cluster.

The aim of the day was to give the staff the ability to use PTM in the classroom and ideas to try out. The afternoon was a special composition project using PTM as a stimulus...

It was a fantastic day - everyone was so enthusiastic and willing to try everything asked of them. The tasks were approached with real gusto!

I was so pleased to receive an email this morning from one of the teachers - Anna-Claire Withey. She had immediately used PTM with her class of Year 4 on settings/openings. She explained that her class struggle with literacy but was 'amazed by what the children have achieved!'

Here are the examples that Anna sent me - I think they are wonderful.

What better feedback for me, than this!

Example 1
When I was traveling I saw magical things! There were ice caves and dripping fire, but the thing I remember most of all is the magical field. There was grass as green as sea weed and tree trunks browner than mud. The leaves were all the same green as the grass. But a most peculiar hut caught my eye. Like a stone cave but greyer than lead.
But the wizard that lived there was more magical than the field. He looked powerful in his gold. He looked old and wise. The magical wizard in the lonely field!

Example 2
I was walking in the fields I walk there every day and I never get tired of this place. I walked and walked far away from my farm house. Finally I got to the top of the hill. I looked at the valley, it was all green but I noticed something grey. I rolled down the hill to investigate.

Many thanks to Ian Young and all the staff who attended the course.

I had a fantastic time working in Poplar east London with the Cine club. This is a group of children who are making their own films on the subject of what they Love. They have filmed such diverse things as Goldfish in the school tank to eating biscuits!

I went in to help them compose music to the shots that they created.

The children all worked incredibly hard - it is an afterschool club so they were all quite tired! The results will be recorded and put alongside their scenes. The final film is being shown in a full size cinema and I can't wait to see it.

I was lucky to run some workshops in the wonderful Woodlands centre in lancashire for the music services annual conference. The title of the day was 'Making every child's musical learning matter.'

My workshop involved the teachers making a story up from the 5 picture narrative map on PTM and then composing music form each section. This is something that I have done a lot in schools all over the UK.

The teachers were all really up for the challenge as they did not have long! The resulting music was excellent and showed us all the power of linking muisc to other areas of the curriculum.

It never ceases to amaze me - the ideas that students get. Story telling with PTM is great fun, motivating and extremely useful in engaging people back into the purpose for writing.

Here is how to do it...

Make a 5 picture/tune story map on PTM. Get the students to work in groups of about 6. The task is to make up a story and tell the rest of the group in a special stroy telling session. They only need to plan out the outline of their story making sure that all the ideas link together.

When they tell the story they need to make sure they include all trhe detail they want and keep the listener entertained and enthralled! They can use voices and actions if it helps. If the weather is good go outside and sit round a pretend fire.

Do this regularly and keep notes of all the different stories that are created. It will become a really special time for you and the students.

All the groups - even though they all have the same stimulus - will come up with different stories. If you can, record the stories and use the CD for future work on plot development.

Have fun!