BUILDING THE COMMUNICATION SKILLS, ORACY, WELLBEING AND CREATIVITY OF YOUNG CHILDREN AND THE ADULTS WHO WORK WITH THEM

Course Outline:

All practitioners working with children want to help them build resilience and emotional heath, and to improve their speaking, listening and creativity skills so that they can fully explore their environment and learn how to express themselves clearly.

This workshop will help you understand and use Jenny Mosley’s unique Golden Model and her Five Steps that enable early years practitioners to structure a rich and challenging, yet emotionally safe, environment that includes fair boundaries and vibrant circle times. To promote self-esteem and self-confidence in others we need to look after ourselves first.

Delegates will be encouraged to look at how we can become inspiring, emotionally intelligent role models for the children within our care. Are you truly a reflective practitioner developing your own skills and talents? As kindness is the key to positive relationships, we need to reflect upon whether we are being kind to ourselves and our team? Strong staff morale creates an ethos which can help us feel safe enough to become playful learners along with the children.

Course Outcomes:

• How children are taught to practise the skills of thinking, looking, listening, speaking and concentrating through games specifically targeting each skill.
• How to encourage all children to raise issues that matter to them and to listen to one another’s responses.
• Children develop moral values and ‘golden hearts’ through the embedding of ‘Golden Rules’ as the basis ofgood relationships.
• There is encouragement to uphold the values and routines through motivating, sparkly reward systems andcalm, fair boundaries.
• Using puppets, ‘energisers’ and ‘magical metaphors’ we help children express their emotions, learn throughfun and build relationships and kindness.
• Traditional games, both indoors and outdoors, are fabulous for children. They encourage turn-taking,positive relationships, working as a team and enjoying fun together.
• Promoting self-esteem in the adults and children means we become reflective practitioners and inspiringrole models, promoting staff morale.
• How we can all become playful learners alongside the children.

Jenny Mosley

SHINING A LIGHT ON LITERACY: PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO TEACHING LITERACY IN THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM

Course Overview:

Regardless of the curricula we teach, or the assessments we use, the fundamentals of teaching speaking and listening, reading, and writing are central to all primary classrooms. So how can we improve on the way we deliver and the way our pupils learn?

In this session we will explore the three key areas of literacy: speaking and listening, reading and writing, from a perspective of both the teacher and the learner, providing practical teaching approaches and learner engagement activities that can result in increased pupil engagement and progress.

The session will enable teachers to take away strategies and activities that they can adopt immediately as well as approaches to consider for their mid- and long-term planning.

Course Outcomes:

• To develop a range of practical strategies for teachers and pupils to improve literacy in the classroom.
• To explore the three key strands: speaking and listening, reading and writing and how we connect them, soour pupils become ‘readerly writers and writerly readers’.
• To underpin our exploration through the research so we are confident about the impact these strategies canhave on our teaching and pupils’ learning.
• To provide opportunities to apply what we learn to our own phase of teaching.
• To reflect on our own practice and share the practice of others.

Wendy Delf

DOING WHAT WORKS: A TOOLKIT OF PRACTICAL STRATEGIES TO CREATE AND SUSTAIN A CULTURE OF PROGRESS AND ATTAINMENT FOR ALL

Course Overview:

In this highly interactive workshop, delegates will experience a range of strategies that Claire uses in her work supporting some of the world’s most successful schools.

The aim is to move teachers from “inspiration to implementation”; teachers are busy people and need concrete, practical strategies and resources that they can use immediately to enhance learning and Claire prides herself on being able to provide such ‘low prep but high impact’ approaches.

The average lesson in the UK is made up of approximately 70% teacher talk and, as the saying goes, ‘classrooms are the places where pupils go to watch teachers working hard!’ Claire can show you how to re-address the balance and make sure that lessons are not only inspiring but that teachers really are working smarter not harder.

Course Outcomes:

Participants will learn how to:

• focus teacher energy on the specific areas proven to have the biggest impact on learning.
• easily maximise the impact of the physical learning environment to boost progress.
• create a culture of challenge and choice in which students are working harder than their teachers!

Claire Gadsby

LEARNING FOCUSED LEADERSHIP – THE ESSENTIAL TOOLKIT FOR ASPIRING AND NEW MIDDLE LEADERS

Course Overview:

Becoming a middle leader for the very first time can be a daunting first step of leadership, as the role and responsibilities undertaken have a broader scope than a class role and responsibility. During this workshop participants will have the opportunity to increase their knowledge, develop their leadership skills and deepen their understanding of what it means to be a middle leader.

Focusing on what is relevant to their role in their school as a middle leader and how they can contribute to the ethos and culture of the school and so positively impact learning. As a result of attending this course participants will leave feeling more confident in their role as a middle leader and more able to lead and manage with greater clarity in their area or sphere of responsibility, armed with a toolkit of strategies to impact learning.

Course Outcomes:

Participants will:

• be able to differentiate between leadership and management and have developed their own sense of “why” when considering vision.
• have explored their understanding of “self” through the personal qualities needed to be a middle leader and to how to build resilience and humility.
• learn about Goleman’s Leadership Styles, what style to use when to be most effective and why.
• know more about building teams around the theme of “Positive Intent” and know the crucial role played bytrust in building teams and the importance of communication when getting the best from their team.
• have the opportunity to learn how to hold “difficult” accountable conversations, develop theirunderstanding of collective and responsible accountability.
• Learn how to chair meetings that are effective and efficient, bringing out the best in colleagues andcommunicating a shared vision around impact on student learning.
• have the opportunity to reflect on how to use their time, energy and resource more effectively andefficiently through a leadership toolkit.

Helen O’Donoghue

FINDING THE FIZZ: THE FUTURE OF TEACHING, LEARNING & SHERBET LEMONS

Course Overview:

Nina Jackson will take you on a journey of practical strategies to meet the needs of our 21st Century Learners. In a world of ever changing educational policies and practices, it is the unique world of the child, growing, learning and experiencing the world with different learning experiences which counts. Data, tests and exams does not a great learner make.

‘Of Teaching, Learning & Sherbet Lemons’ is what education, schools, teaching and learning is all about. We need the solid exterior – the rigour, the rules, the systems and the structures – to make everything work. Getting through the hard shell makes going in search of the fizzy centre that much more satisfying, and it is here, at the core of teaching and learning, where the most magical things take place, where the real fizz happens.

This is the part that really makes everything worthwhile – the chemical reaction that produces outstanding, innovative and motivational teaching and learning for everyone in our classrooms, not just the few. And fizzy teaching and learning is great. It’s exciting, it wakes you up and, boy, does it give you some zing. Nina Jackson will inspire you to be the best you can be and ways to help children and young people find their fizz in learning.

Course Outcomes:

During this session together we will:

• Explore the pedagogical tools needed to meet all learners from the More Able, Talented and Gifted to learners whohave additional learning needs.
• Be able to use tools, strategies and opportunities to engage and inspire all learners to experience the ‘fizz’ and magicof learning.
• Develop systems to integrate effective, simple and adaptive ways to use digital technology in your daily teachingwithout exhausting educators.
• Explore and create opportunities for all students to have accessible systems to access learning.
• Integrate the importance of wellbeing for learning as well as cognitive processing and be able to reflect on theirlearning as well as the learning of others
• Use differentiated tools so that every learner has an unique experience. This will help them find their ‘fizz’ andexcitement for learning.
• Discuss, debate and find simple, yet effective ways of integrating AI into your learning and teaching without exhaustingeducators.
• Have a better understanding of how to develop creativity, awe and wonder in lessons.
• PLEASE ENSURE YOU BRING A PORTABLE DIGITAL DEVICE TO THIS SESSION AS WE WILL BE EXPLORING SOME EXCITINGTOOLS AND SHARING OUR LEARNING IN REAL TIME.

Nina Jackson

BOTHEREDNESS: A REVERIE IN MAKING LEARNING MATTER

Course Overview:

Based on the bestselling teacher book ‘Botheredness’, this course will offer a high speed rollercoaster ride focusing on getting children talking, thinking and writing about what they’re learning! Getting them bothered!

This course will inspire teachers to reclaim their professional imagination and reignite the excitement they felt when they entered the teaching profession. It’s about botheredness – a made-up word that everyone understands – a word that Hywel uses to sum up the kind of authentic care and adult positioning that is real and deliberate and gets young people on board with learning. Hywel sets out to help teachers enhance their understanding of what it means to lead learning and thinking, to stand beside children as well as in front of them, whilst developing their knowledge acquisition with compassion, warmth and optimism.

Course Outcomes:

We will explore:

• Developing our pedagogical toolkit
• Using narrative and context to drive learning and thinking
• Developing motivation by moving children from engagement to investment
• Understanding creativity
• The Botheredness Wheel of people, place and problem and how it might support our planning
• Strategies to harness our own professional imaginations whilst maintaining professional integrity
• Making the mundane irresistible – avoiding the pedagogy of poverty and embracing a pedagogy of power Practical examples to take back to the classroom straight away
• Nothing weird!

Hywel Roberts

CHANGING THE CULTURE – HOW TO MAXIMISE HAPPINESS AND WELLBEING AND IMPROVE PERFORMANCE

Course Overview:

Friendship is an essential element in the lives of all humans. Finding trusting and reliable friendships is not always easy and pupils in school whose friendships are not harmonious will be unhappy and will under-achieve. The ways girls and boys form friendships are different and so this course divides its time between looking at how we can best support girls and boys discreetly.

The course dives deep into the psychological and atavistic forces that drive behaviours and social connections and focuses on ways in which schools can guide pupils’ relational cultures. Supporting girls when they fall out with each other can be complex and nuanced. The course will teach delegates the best ways to empower girls to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of friendships for themselves.

When the dominant version of masculinity in a boy cohort becomes sour and over-sexualised they can get lost in a mire of hierarchical turbulence leading to poor communication, low academic achievement and even sexual harassment. The course will introduce delegates to a programme of study which will guide the relational cultures of boys to become gentle and dignified.

Course Outcomes:

Delegates will have a raft of proven strategies to take back to their schools which can bring about radical and lasting change in the relational cultures of both boys and girls in their school.

Andrew Hampton

SUCCESSFUL GAMES TEACHING IN PRIMARY PE

Course Overview:

This course is suitable for both specialist and non-specialist primary and secondary teachers who work in early years and the primary phase. It will provide a range of fun physical development activities, giving children the firm foundations they need, to become Physically Literate and able to access Physical Education and Sport in later years.

This course will focus on two key aspects of Physical Education:

1. Ensuring the development of firm foundations to enable children to succeed in all areas.
2. Building on these foundations to enable success in Games.

Often whilst teaching games, the focus is on developing the pre requisite physical skills whilst hoping that children will almost “absorb” tactical awareness. Research shows us that is not the case. Tactics should be “taught not caught.” This course will enable teachers to analyse and develop the physical and decision-making skills essential for enjoyable and effective engagement in games, in a developmentally appropriate way.

The session will make you re-evaluate the way you teach games, ensuring all the essential building blocks are in place to help students achieve.

Course Outcomes:

• Understanding the importance of movement and play in child development.
• Creating an environment for children to explore and consolidate movement skills.
• Building the skills of locomotion, stability and object control in a developmentally appropriate way.
• Pedagogical approaches to developing Physical Literacy.
• The physical and decision-making skills involved in different types of games.
• Progressing from fundamental movement skills into games and activities.
• The importance of progression in cognitive skills alongside physical skills.
• Pedagogical approaches to the teaching of games.
• STEP Principles to adapt games to include and challenge all students.

Lesley Miniveri