Reinvigorate your primary English teaching and classroom with John Marsden 2024094F

Date and time

Tuesday 26 November 2024, 9.30 am to 3.30 pm

Delivery mode

In person at ISV, 40 Rosslyn St, West Melbourne

Audience 

Primary/Junior School Educator, Leader

Description

The Cornish proverb ‘The tongueless man gets his land took’ sets the scene for this exclusive opportunity to rethink the teaching of English in Australian primary schools.

Our youngest children are naturally poetic, in their daily endeavours to make language do what they want it to do. Our challenge is to help them develop their vocabularies, their awareness of syntax and their ability to use increasingly sophisticated rhythms and patterns of speech, but without robbing them of their poetic expression.

Implicit and explicit in John Marsden’s teaching of language is the understanding that English is infinitely malleable. It is capable of extraordinary possibilities but unfortunately too many users of English feel bullied and defeated by the language.

It is not for English to bully us, rather, it is we who should bully English!

This workshop will be crammed to bursting point with new understandings – and a large number of new English lessons and activities.

Key takeaways

• Strategies on how to teach students to think and feel and observe at the same time as they talk and write.
• Greater understanding of how to help students experiment with language... to be adventurous and unafraid.
• Tools to take away… such as new English lessons and activities.

Presenter information

John Marsden
John Marsden was born in Melbourne in 1950. From an early age he enjoyed the journeys into the magical worlds that reading can provide. 

John’s teachers in Grade 4 and Grade 6 encouraged him to write, and at the age of nine he decided he wanted to become an author.

For seven years John attended The King's School Parramatta, a strict military school in Sydney. From there he went on to the University of Sydney, to study Arts/Law. However, he soon decided that a career in law looked stultifying, so he dropped out and drifted around for nearly 10 years, trying a remarkable variety of jobs.

At the age of 28 he began a teaching course, which he loved from the start. Embarking on a teaching career also fuelled his interest in writing. In 1987 he succeeded in getting his first book, So Much to Tell You, published. A string of hits followed, highlighted by the Tomorrow, When the War Began series. John has now sold more than six million books in Australia alone, but is an international bestseller, with many major awards to his credit.

John's interest in education has never waned. In 1998 he bought the Tye Estate, 850 acres of natural bush, near Romsey, and later added the property next door. For eight years he ran enormously popular writers' courses and camps at Tye, before starting his own school there, Candlebark, in 2006. Then in 2016 he added a second school, Alice Miller, at Macedon, for students in Years 7-12. 

In 2024, John still teaches classroom English – and loves it.

Link(s) to relevant VRQA Standards

• Curriculum and Student Learning – Student learning outcomes