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ELCISS aims to enhance language and communication in secondary school children with primary language and communication impairment through narrative/storytelling and vocabulary enrichment.
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Enhancing Language and Learning in Secondary Schools Conference
10/07/09
A teachers' conference was organised by Victoria Joffe from the Department of Language and Communication Science, City University, London, in collaboration with the London borough of Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham. The conference was funded by The Communication Trust. Delegates from all over Redbridge and Barking & Dagenham attended the Enhancing Language and Learning in Secondary Schools Conference on the 10th July 2009, at Chigwell Hall.
The day started with Dr. Victoria Joffe giving an overview about speech and language needs in secondary schools today, which was both informative and full of amusing tales reflecting everyday miscommunications that happen to us all. Professor Nick Peacey from the Institute of Education then went on to talk about how the curriculum at secondary schools needs to evolve to involve language support for all children and how factors such as the school's physical environment impacts on children's learning. To complete the morning's talks, Maggie Johnson, a specialist speech and language therapist gave an entertaining, and highly thought-provoking talk about active listening in schools.
After lunch, Alex Kelly, a specialist speech and language therapist in social skills described how social skills can be taught in schools, and then the final speaker of the day was Barbara Knowles, the executive director of SEBDA who spoke passionately about the needs of children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties in secondary schools.
The conference had extremely positive feedback from the varied audience of teachers, speech and language therapists and other professionals involved in working with secondary school aged children. Their was a common call for more conferences of this nature, and all participants went home with clear ideas of good practice that they were planning to implement in their respective schools.
For more information, contact Victoria Joffe