Andy Tharby & Fran Haynes

As with all aspects of developing literacy, the teaching of reading is not the sole preserve of English teachers. This session will look at strategies for the explicit teaching of reading that support all students, but disproportionately support students who experience socio-economic disadvantage. This will also touch on disciplinary literacy.

Sarah Wordlaw

Join Sarah Wordlaw, author of Shake Up the Primary Curriculum, as she explores the importance of diversifying the English curriculum in primary schools. This session will highlight the need for broader representation in literature, strategies for overcoming common challenges, and practical steps for incorporating diverse texts into your teaching. Sarah will share insights, actionable ideas, and examples of how an inclusive curriculum fosters engagement, empathy, and a sense of belonging for all learners. Leave inspired to transform your classroom with stories that reflect the richness of the world.

Chris Runeckles

Oral language is a core element of developing literacy. Getting talk right in the secondary classroom is important in supporting pupils to learn about talk, through talk and how to talk. At secondary particularly this will include disciplinary talk. This session will explore the evidence in this area and provide some practical strategies for teaching structured talk within a subject specific framework.

Fliss James & Melissa Prendergast

High quality interactions in the early years really matter. We know from a wealth of research evidence that it is crucial to prioritise the development of children’s communication and language skills through socially-meaningful interactions. In this session, Fliss and Melissa introduce the ShREC Approach, developed at Sheringham Nursery School, and explain how it provides us with a simple, memorable and powerful set of four evidence-informed strategies which we can embed into everyday practice. We can use these strategies with every child, every day.​

Matthew Western

Whole-class feedback in writing is an instructional approach where teachers review students' written work collectively, identify common strengths and areas for improvement, and then provide feedback to the entire class rather than offering individualised comments. Matthew Western considers research into effective practice and describes his school's approach to whole-class feedback. Participants will leave with a range of practical examples on how to implement this in their schools.

Nicola Jacobs

The Fluency Five is a powerful set of strategies which can transform reading instruction by focusing on developing fluency. Drawing on evidence-informed approaches, we’ll explore how these five strategies—Modelled Reading, Phrase Marking, Echo Reading, Paired Reading, Repeated Reading, (and a bonus sixth strategy: Performance Reading)—can help students improve accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Together, these elements lay the foundation for stronger comprehension and lifelong reading skills. This work is based the London South Research School's Fluency Focus programme which has been trialled in 30 schools as part of the EEF's Early Stage Pipeline Development programme.

Kat Branco and Helen Bruckdorfer

This session will explore the importance of using scaffolding in helping students become independent readers. Underpinned by evidence in this field, the session will offer of a range of practical examples and models to develop scaffolding as an adaptive stategy in the KS2 and 3 classroom.

Siobhan Campbell

Change is hard. This workshop will consider the best available evidence for helping more people move with new interventions and ultimately, stick with them. It will give some practical ideas for cultivating the behaviours you want to see.

Rosie Thomson

Debate shouldn't be the preserve of the few - it's a powerful tool that can enrich every primary classroom. We will explore how debate can promote active listening and exploratory talk, helping children express their ideas clearly and engage critically with others. By introducing debate across the curriculum, we can foster flexible thinking, build confidence and make learning a more equitable, collaborative experience for our students.

Fran Haynes

Morphology is the study of the parts of words (stems, suffixes, prefixes) while etymology is the word origin and historical development of its meaning. Employing both when engaging in vocabulary instruction can be extremely helpful in building word consciousness and understanding. This session will explore how teachers can achieve this in their lessons.

Andy Tharby

One of the fundamental aspects of the teaching of writing is teacher modelling. This is a complex and multi-phase process that can run the risk of producing high cognitive load for pupils. This session will unpick how we get the modelling of writing right and avoid the common pitfalls.

Fliss James & Melissa Prendergast

Interactive reading is one of the most powerful approaches to supporting children's communication & language. This session will explore the research evidence and offer practical guidance to develop educators' knowledge, skills and support for implementation.

Jeffrey Boakye

Jeffrey Boakye is an ex-teacher turned writer, speaker, broadcaster and educator, with expertise in issues surrounding race, masculinity, education and popular culture. Jeffrey taught English in London and Yorkshire for 15 years and now provides training for educational establishments on race, identity, masculinity and education. He is also Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Education, has eight published books and hosts BBC Radio 4’s Add to Playlist.

Marcus Jones

The academic transition from primary to secondary is a significant step for pupils, embodied by the vocabulary leap students experience. This session will explore the extent of the language challenge at Key Stage 2 and 3 and look at data from a Leeds and Lancaster University project that indicates what language pupils are exposed to in years 5-8: this includes list of the most frequent topic-specific vocabulary in subjects such as English, Science and Geography, and we will show how words that are apparently known take on detail and nuance that they do not have in general, non-academic language use.

Steve Trafford

How can leaders ensure that teachers have a shared understanding around the barriers disadvantaged pupils face with reading? How can we ensure there is a shared mental model of the most effective ways to support pupils with their reading in lessons? This session will explore how we can design Professional Development to centre the experiences of disadvantaged pupils, build a consensus around the importance of effective literacy instruction, and have clarity about what this looks like in the classroom.

Holly Churchill and Ashleigh Murray

Evidence shows that communication and language teaching benefits young children’s learning and a range of approaches support this. In this session we will focus on developing talk routines, to enhance the quality of talk in the Early Years classroom, in readiness for Year 1. This includes building language-rich environments, teaching vocabulary and facilitating collaborative talk. Gain practical takeaways, including medium-term planning, worked examples, and an implementation plan for effective adoption in the classroom.

Zoe Grainger

If we want to see equitable outcomes for our students, we must ensure that literacy is taught well. Rather than dumbing down our text choices to ‘make it easier’ for students, we need to be pitching up, to ensure we can raise literacy standards for all. This session will explore how to introduce complex texts into the classroom and empower students to analyse these texts through a disciplinary lens; a task which will be deemed essential if we want our students to be able to question, challenge, and produce knowledge within our subject areas.

David Windle & Victoria Begley

This session will outline the most effective way to structure a writing unit for the primary age range and include describing the best strategies to use in each part of a unit. Based on the Improving Literacy at KS1 and two guidance reports the session will discuss how to apply the underlying principles to the planning of any unit of work. As well as providing a clear guide to planning, the session will highlight key methods for adapting teaching to meet the needs of all learners at all stage s of a writing unit.

Anjalie Vairanvanathan

Whilst many teachers in the primary phase will be familiar with reading fluency, it has often been neglected in the secondary setting. By giving students regular structured opportunities to practise reading aloud, we can develop their fluency, and in turn help to help improve their overall reading comprehension. This session will look at some of the evidence around reading fluency and its benefits, before outlining and exemplifying a set of practical classroom approaches specifically aimed at secondary contexts.

Sarah Wordlaw

In this thought-provoking session, Sarah Wordlaw examines the critical role of diversity and inclusion at the leadership level in education. Drawing on insights from her blog, she will explore how diverse leadership fosters equitable decision-making and creates inclusive environments for all. Sarah will offer practical strategies for ensuring all voices are heard and represented in leadership spaces. This session is a must for anyone committed to building truly inclusive schools from the top down.

Phil Stock

This session will look at how we have implemented a whole school reading strategy over the last five years, looking in particular at how it relates to our Pupil Premium Strategy. The session will focus on how we have evolved our approach to Tutor Time reading over the years to ensure that implementation is sustained.

Soofia Amin

This session will look at how promoting a multilingual approach provides schools with an asset based approach to languages, allowing teachers to unleash the power of their multilingual learners - educationally, socially, and culturally. This workshop is aimed at both primary and secondary contexts.

Ricky Cooksey

This session will offer a slightly different model of looking at which words to teach and how to teach them effectively. It will offer 9 core principles of effective vocabulary teaching, broken down into three key phases - describing, exploring and consolidating. There will be some practical exemplification for some of these principles.

David Windle

This session will explore how to move beyond shared and modelled writing by using a technique called supported writing, in which children are encouraged to think like writers in every lesson and to take accountability for their own writing. Supported writing builds on established practices in teaching writing by focussing on the use of sentence models and repeated handover between the child and the teacher. Supported writing can be adapted to meet the needs of all learners and is designed to ensure every child is actively engaged in crafting sentences during the lesson.

Johnny Richards

Pupils who are proficient academic readers are more likely to access the knowledge and thinking required in school, the workplace and society. Developing pupils' discipline-focused reading strategies, their ability to read with purpose, and to read more critically, is therefore essential. This session will outline some of the evidence behind disciplinary literacy, and exemplify how knowledge is specialised in some of the disciplines.