OtherWise Education

Working with a brilliant group of kids this week on the KUDOS project.

💭 KUDOS 🧠

As part of our work for , some pupils in Year 5 have been working with OtherWise Education each afternoon to face challenges and overcome them as a team 💪🏻

In this session, pupils used the text ‘Can I Build Another Me’ to identify what they were good at and things they're still working on ⭐️

It was my brilliant snow-soaked final day at Glade Primary School in 2022.

This year we’ve had Iliad Projects, visits to Cambridge, our first KS2 Poetry Retreat, a podcasting club, oodles of nonsense poetry, creative writing, filming opportunities with Scholastic, a published poetry anthology, a multimodal literacy project called and the beginnings of our cross-school projects, with Writing Works.

I feel honoured to be a part of this school community, and look forward to all that 2023 can bring for us all.

Yesterday, we welcomed Pete Gray - Big Appetite Illustration - to be our fourth guest facilitator on Writing Works.

Pete’s workshop was a brilliant masterclass in how to share meaning with image - he guided children with lessons on character design, which involved 3D goggles (which obviously elevated you to god-status in the kids’ eyes, Pete 😂)

As well as this, they got to learn a lot about the different processes an illustrator goes through when building towards a finished image.

It was abundantly useful, and sat beautifully alongside the sessions led by Chitra Soundar, Sonya Patel Ellis and Adisa.

Thanks Pete!

It was great to welcome Sonya Patel Ellis as our second guest facilitator for the children taking part in Writing Works.

Sonya is an artist, writer and editor, and she gave a wonderful session, guiding the kids to find their writer’s voice in non-fiction.

All sessions were hosted at Glade Primary School, in partnership with Gearies, Redbridge, Highlands and Cranbrook Primary Schools.

Local writers inspiring local kids.

Our new Writing Works project is in its pilot.

Our sixty learners from across five Redbridge primaries schools have been exploring what it means to be a writer, in the broadest sense.

This week, the learners worked with Chitra Soundar, a wonderful children’s author who shared many pearls of wisdom, and explained the ways that she develops her own fiction writing.

What a wild first half term!

It was great to run the Iliad Project with Y5 at Elmhurst Primary in Forest Gate, and Nelson Primary in East Ham.

Joyful to be back at Glade Primary School teaching Y3 in the forest.

Farzana Wahed Hussain and I presented together at the Little Wandle ‘Building Fluent Readers’ conference.

And it was even the first bit of international work for me, in the form of a mad weekend teaching Greek mythology in New Delhi, India.

Roll on the next half term. 🙌🏻🙌🏻

We are back in action - Poetry Retreat 2022 with the New Vision Trust, from 24th to 27th May.

It was humbling to see how brilliantly everybody - teachers and children from four schools - came together in their love of words, nature, exploration and play.

Word Up is my collection of online classes for kids aged 7-11 on .

Did you know that since February, I have taught 178 kids around the world in these speaking skills classes?!

I have just launched a new one - How To Argue Well - which helps kids to understand the benefits of speaking their minds, and gives them the tools to avoid slipping into bad arguments.

If you are interested, you can search Jonny Walker Outschool and find me.

Words are nice. Let’s use them.

Well would you look at this! Here is the first chance to see the book, written with Michael Rosen through lockdown.

When I was writing it, I had this idea that I wanted to create a book that longs to be made tatty. I want - more than anything - for it to be something that teachers can return to when teaching creatively.

I had the enormous pleasure of spending hours exploring Michael’s YouTube channel, to see just how much potential there is in those short videos to inject vitality into our writing classrooms. It is a treasure chest.

I am thoroughly excited for you to see it, and I give a world of gratitudes to Michael for suggesting we link up on this project.

The best place to get hold of the book will be through Michael’s website - www.MichaelRosen.co.uk - and do check out his YouTube channel too, as I’m going to hosting a monthly series for kids on there.

Available very soon - just want to do a final check on the quality of the printed book.

Hoping that some Indie bookshops will be picking it up too, and am very pleased that my local haven of will be stocking it.

It is available on Amazon as well, to pre-order.

Friends, let’s explore poetry writing together - whether you are a teacher, parent, poet or randomer!