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EnlightenED: Navigating the Educational Landscape with Insight and Innovation

2024 ELSA France Annual International Conference for Educators

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Saturday, March 15
 

TBA

A Vision for English Literature: What Matters in the English Classroom
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
A Vision for English Literature: What Matters in the English Classroom

As much philosophical as it is practical, this workshop will attempt to answer one of the most fundamental questions an English teacher can pose: what matters – really matters – in the teaching of literature. Working through a series of assertions, designed to provoke and generate discussion, the workshop will consider what makes the discipline of English distinctly and uniquely English-y. Having explore this question together, the workshop will conclude by considering its practical implication: what does it actually look like to teach in accordance with these proposed disciplinary assumptions?

Secondary Ages (11-18) with a focus on 14-16
Speakers
avatar for Andrew Atherton

Andrew Atherton

Director of Learning and Research, Teacher of English, Downe House
Having completed an MA in English Literature as well as a PhD in twentieth-century literature, both funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, I decided to make the jump from university to secondary school teaching. Since then, I’ve taught English to a range of classes... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Creating comics in KS1
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Comics are a fantastic way to get young children engaged in reading and writing. Based on research into children’s comics making, this workshop aimed at KS1 teachers (ages 5-7) will introduce you to creative and engaging ways of making and learning about comics. We will look the relationship between picturebooks and comics and consider how to develop children’s visual literacy. Through practical drawing activities, participants will have the chance to develop their understanding of how to simplify drawings and use symbols to communicate emotions. Participants will learn to fold and make a ‘zine’ (small DIY booklets), and through words and pictures get a chance to create their own mini-comic, an activity they can replicate back in their own classrooms across all subject areas.
Speakers
HJ

Helen Jones

Lecturer in Primary Education, UCL
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Learning the Rules to Break the Rules: using poetic forms in the classroom
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Limerick, villanelle, pantoum, sestina. Some forms of poetry come with rules about the subject or theme (odes, elegy) and some come with strict rules about the number of lines, stanzas, rhyme, refrain etc. Choosing a poetic form to explore can be a ‘way in’ for students to begin to understand how important it is to choose words with care. This workshop will look at certain forms in order to ‘have a go’ at producing original poetry that follows well established rules. The aim is for students to develop a more disciplined approach to writing through imitation or pastiche before branching out and developing their own style of writing.
Speakers
AP

Allison Perkin

English Teacher
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Reading Fluency: The missing link in Secondary? (11-18)
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Reading Fluency: The missing link in Secondary? (11-18)
Since the pandemic, reading scores have been falling and this is having a significant impact on students' ability to access the secondary curriculum (11-18). Lots of work is done in the primary key stages, however much of this work to help students read falls away as they begin secondary school. Fluency (bring between word recognition and language comprehension) is a crucial element of the reading curriculum and can do a lot to catch up struggling older readers.

Aimed at 11-18
Speakers
avatar for Jack Reynolds

Jack Reynolds

English teacher and Head of Year 11, The Charter School East Dulwich, London
My name is Jack Reynolds, I am an English teacher and Head of Year 11 at The Charter School East Dulwich, in south east London. I have worked there for four years, and have been a pastoral leader for 3. Previously, I did the Teach First programme at a school in Kent, where I worked... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Reducing the writing block KS3/4 (ages 11-16)
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Reducing the writing block
This workshop will focus on increasing student experience of independent practice to enable them to write with more purpose, building stamina through the Key Stages to support better outcomes for all pupils in the classroom. For KS3 students, crafting sentences is key to excellent extended writing. This session will focus on slow writing and modelled sentence writing in KS3 in developing more imaginative and original work whilst developing students ability to edit their work to improve it. At KS4 we will consider a more structured approach to analytical writing and essay planning, supporting students to develop their own arguments.
Age range: KS3/4 (11-16) 
Speakers
OC

Olivia Coates

I am the Faculty Lead for communications at The Charter School East Dulwich, responsible for English, Media, Film and all Modern Foreign Languages. I am also Subject Lead for English. I have been at Charter for 6 years where I have completed both the NPQML and NPQSL and deliver the... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

The Art of the Sentence: Essay Writing through Micro Preparation
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
The Art of the Sentence: Essay Writing through Micro Preparation
Novelist John Banville once described the sentence as the ‘greatest invention of civilization’. In this workshop, we’ll explore the powerful role that sentences play in our ability to construct and explore ideas, specifically in the context of essay writing. We’ll consider a variety of high impact sentence stems, grammatical rules, syntactic structures and phrases that, almost tweezer-like, students can pick up and place in a variety of their responses. When their use is honed through frequent practice and exposure, such stems and syntactic formulations can easily be transferred across multiple texts and age-ranges and, with repeated use, their deployment becomes almost automatic, a kind of stylistic flex that students apply almost without thinking. The workshop will cover a variety of specific examples as well as ideas for teaching and modelling them.

Secondary Ages (11-18) with a focus on 14-16
Speakers
avatar for Andrew Atherton

Andrew Atherton

Director of Learning and Research, Teacher of English, Downe House
Having completed an MA in English Literature as well as a PhD in twentieth-century literature, both funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, I decided to make the jump from university to secondary school teaching. Since then, I’ve taught English to a range of classes... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Thinking about the text: active reading strategies
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
It is perhaps apposite to remember that authors do not usually write in order for students and teachers to unpack their words. The wonderful writer Claire Keegan articulated this in a recent interview: “I can’t explain my work. I just write stories. I’ve never thought about a theme. I never once have. I just think about the text.” As all English teachers are asked time and time again “but how do we know that’s what the author meant? How do we know that word was chosen on purpose?” Of course these questions are valid but nevertheless our job remains: to deliver lessons that help students to “think about the text” in a clear and focused manner through engaging active reading strategies. We need to take time to encourage the skills needed across the curriculum and for future assessments. This workshop will concentrate on how to enable students to understand explicit and implicit meaning and attitudes, select and evaluate what is relevant to specific purposes and how effects are created through authorial choice (whether intentional or not!).  

Target audience: Secondary English
Speakers
AP

Allison Perkin

English Teacher
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
  ENGLISH

TBA

Thinking Through Writing: Using Generative Writing in the English Classroom
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Thinking Through Writing: Using Generative Writing in the English Classroom
Students often see writing as the terminus of thinking rather than its starting point. Writing is something that happens after thinking; it is the solidification of something that has already been considered and deliberated. This workshop offers a different way of thinking about and framing student writing. Rather than a record of thinking, writing is the thinking. Focussing specifically on the English classroom, the workshop will explore a series of practical strategies that teachers can deploy in their own practice, all designed to get students thinking hard through writing.

Secondary Ages (11-18) with a focus on 14-16
Speakers
avatar for Andrew Atherton

Andrew Atherton

Director of Learning and Research, Teacher of English, Downe House
Having completed an MA in English Literature as well as a PhD in twentieth-century literature, both funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, I decided to make the jump from university to secondary school teaching. Since then, I’ve taught English to a range of classes... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA

TBA

Writing what is thought, felt and imagined: practical strategies for encouraging writing
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
Until being faced with writing challenges during a recent MA in Creative Writing, I had forgotten just how terrifying writing for someone else to evaluate can be. This workshop will hopefully make the process a little less daunting for students through useful and enjoyable strategies designed to prompt thoughtful written responses. The strategies will remain simple with the aim of reducing the pressure students may feel to produce obscure or totally original content. The purpose is to think about how best to use language to convey what is thought, felt and imagined in clearly expressed and carefully structured compositions.
Speakers
AP

Allison Perkin

English Teacher
Saturday March 15, 2025 TBA
 
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