The Literacy Conference
with Carol Allen, Richard Hirstwood, Pete Wells, Chris Barson and Dr Sarah Moseley.
We are announcing our third 2025 conference: a day focused on developing inclusive literacy for learners with severe, complex or neurodiverse learning needs.
We examine the foundations and implementation of a robust and inclusive literacy curriculum. Five impactful presentations will share strategies, ideas and resources to create an inclusive literacy-rich learning environment in your classroom.
Carol Allen – Functional and Creative Literacy
This session will begin with deconstructing a class story to examine core and fringe vocabulary, themes and opportunities for cross-curricular links and activities. We will then explore the link between literacy and communication, particularly the opportunities for offering oracy activities. Carol will then move to various creative opportunities to engage pupils with limited life experiences to make their writing more creative.
Dr Sarah Moseley – Building Strong Foundations: equipping learners with essential phonics skills
Sarah explores strategies, evidence-based approaches, and practical tools that enable us to build a comprehensive and inclusive foundation for literacy development. From supporting meaningful communication to choice-making and independence, Sarah considers why the role of phonics within the reading curriculum for all learners is critical. Sarah will cover:
strategies to support emergent and early literacy development for learners with complex needs
why phonics is the key to emergent literacy
the importance of phonics, phonological and phonemic awareness
a multisensory approach to phonics
Pete Wells – Bringing the ‘Fun’ to the Fundamentals!
Join Pete Wells, author of the multi-award-winning Inclusive Stories, as he explores the power of play and interaction in the classroom. Discover how he extends his engaging stories across a variety of sessions, making learning accessible and exciting for learners of all abilities. Plus, get inspired by Pete’s innovative, highly inclusive media work, showcasing the magic of engagement, inclusion, and—most of all—fun!
Chris Barson – Comic Strip Conversations and Social Stories.
Chris will start by looking at Comic Strip Conversations™ and how these stories help learners understand different social situations and feelings. Chris will share practical strategies to move from theory into practice with resources that support Conversations in the classroom and beyond. He’ll share examples of how technology can help to create Comic Strip Conversations™, but he won’t forget good old low-tech, either! Chris’s session will continue by discussing social stories and how you can use them to help your neurodivergent learners navigate social situations confidently. He’ll share practical strategies for understanding the why behind social stories, explore the different types of stories, and show you how to create personalised stories for individual learners.
Richard Hirstwood – Creating engaging sensory stories
A sensory story delivers many outcomes: relaxation, specific learning targets, interaction, sharing with others, communication…the list can be endless! But there is much more to sensory stories than picking up a book and reading it from front to back! It needs to be multisensory to engage our learners, but how multi-sensory does it need to be? In this fun and engaging session, we look at the importance of:
how a sensory story supports learning
‘bite-size’ stories and how to choose them
why repetition is your friend
how to use digital/mobile technology to enhance the interactivity of a story
choosing multisensory stimuli for your story
9 am Admissions and a virtual tea or coffee to start the day!
9.05 am Welcome, introductions and a warm-up activity.
9.20 am Session 1: Carol Allen – Functional and Creative Literacy
10.10 am Session 2: Dr Sarah Moseley – Building Strong Foundations: equipping learners with essential phonics skills
11.00 am Coffee
11.30 am Session 3: Pete Wells – Bringing the ‘Fun’ to the Fundamentals!
12.20 pm Morning Plenary – Q & A
12.30 pm Lunch
1.30 pm Session 4: Chris Barson – Comic Strip Conversations and Social Stories.
2.20 pm Session 5: Richard Hirstwood – Creating engaging sensory stories
2.50 pm Q & A
3 pm Thank you and close of the day
Click on the names below to read more about our conference presenters!
Pete Wells
This conference will be appropriate for classroom practitioners from special schools and colleges, mainstream settings with specialist SEN provision and early years settings, and those working with pupils with autism, and severe/complex learning needs or both.
The recording of this event will be in your account at online.hirstwood.com. You will access this using the email address on the booking form and your password (instructions for creating your password are in the joining information).
Here you will find:
a digital recording of the event
a transcript of the Zoom chat
These will be available for 10 days after the event.
The cost is £249 plus VAT per delegate. You can select multiple places on the booking form.
You can pay by credit card for this booking or request an invoice on the booking form.
