Last Thursday’s inaugural webinar, ‘Five things every teacher needs to know about reading,’ was, on the whole, a great success. We sold out 1000 tickets and about 500 people showed up on the night. There were a few technical hiccups on the day including a power cut during set up, and our server going down when so many people tried to get into the webinar all at once. We also forgot to record the Q&A which was, arguably, the best bit. Never mind. We’re going to run another – different – reading webinar on Tuesday 30th June at 4pm (BST): Building a Reading Culture.

Your feedback will mean that this week‘s webinar on Thursday 25th June, Five things every teacher needs to know about writing, should be a lot smoother. The waiting room music will be changed in favour of something less offensively ‘funky’ and we’ll do better with muting microphones etc.

The five things the webinar will cover are:

1. Why it’s important to think about why you want students to write
2. Why less is sometimes more
3. The need to encourage students to think about how as well as what they write
4. Why intervention should be at the point of speech
5. The pitfalls and rewards of proofreading

The session will be recorded and available to view for anyone who’s registered.

Learning Spy Academy

The weekly webinars will remain free (or an optional £5) for as long as possible. So far enough people are choosing to pay to make this possible. Thank you. Going forward we will also be putting together some ‘premium’ content and pre-recorded CPD courses. Watch this space.

As well as the regular Thursday slot, we also have a number of terrific specials coming up including:

What every teacher needs to know about psychology with Nick Rose on Monday 6th July at 6pm

Closing the Reading Gap with Alex Quigley on Friday 10th July at 4pm

Curriculum conversations with Martin Robinson on Tuesday 14th July at pm

If you have any suggestions or question please either leave a comment below or email us at academy@learningspy.co.uk.