Teaching Assistants Events in Hertfordshire
Secondary TA Conference 2008
 Held on Monday 23rd June
Hertfordshire Development Centre
Wheathampstead
Key note speaker: Phil Beadle 'Secondary School Teacher of the Year 2004'.
'The country's most inspirational speaker' - The Times
June saw the first Hertfordshire
Secondary Teaching
Conference launched in lively
and occasionally “edgy” style
by Phil Beadle, Secondary
Teacher of the Year in 2004
and star of Channel 4’s “The
Unteachables”. Phil advocated
and practised a relaxed,
informal but pacy approach to
teaching and learning,
concentrating on his first love,
Literacy.
As well as much amusement
there were some very useful
tips. Phil spoke of his technique
of “inhabiting” the body
language of emotionally
distressed pupils – i.e. adopting
the same body language, but
then slowly changing to a
calmer and more relaxed pose – often the pupil will follow.
Delegates acted out Maths
equations, learned about “naked nouns” (nouns without
adjectives) and thought about
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
as “nine different ways of
praising pupils”.
In the afternoon delegates went
to one of four workshops:
Ten Things To Do In Ten
Minutes
(Jeremy Reynolds)
Mind, Body and Soul
(Bev Hannibal)
Using Media and Digital
Technologies to Develop Team
Work and Presentation Skills
(Liz Shapland)
Maths As You’ve Never Seen It
Before
(Sam Burns)
All the workshops were based
on doing things slightly
differently, and all were very
well received by delegates – our thanks to all the tutors. We
were blessed with a lovely
sunny day – a fitting farewell to
our work at Wheathampstead.
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