We’re very pleased to announce that we are running a number of English teacher workshops at the Leicestershire Schools English Hub Conference. This takes place at Judgemeadow Community College, one of our Leicester City Rockhaq schools, on Saturday 13 May 2017. Some of you may remember that we carried out a series of KS3 student music journalism workshops in the school’s English department last year. Here’s a post workshop blog for those of you who would like to see some of the work we did with students at that time.

Now, instead of turning students into music journalists, we are delivering English teacher workshops. These will show teachers to inspire and engage pupils in their English classes to write hundreds of words with a simple, universal stimulus: music. Michelle Dhillon, award-winning journalist and Founder of Rockhaq, will lead all English teacher workshops on the day and will be giving tips and answering questions on how Rockhaq music journalism workshops can work for SEND students, for example.

And what English teacher workshops are we delivering? The English Hub Conference gets our special Hybrid workshops, composed of part media careers talk and part writing session.We are also screening a video to explain our Music + Choice = Engagement formula, linked right at the top of this page. Each session is no more than one hour long and will see teachers writing the first paragraph or more of their very own professional music review. There are only three workshops in total so we advise you to make your bookings and reservations quickly.

Afterwards, all English teachers will be able to take this workshop back to their classroom and deliver it to their pupils directly in the form of a structured lesson. In time, we hope this will enable even more students to be inspired to write and share their own music reviews on The Rockhaq Community. Any student can join The Rockhaq Community at any time.

We’re very pleased to have had the ongoing support of the English department at Judgemeadow Community College since last year and would like to say a big thankyou to their English Literacy Co-ordinator Naheed Iqbal for all her dedication and enthusiasm for the Rockhaq Workshops and Community. Thanks also to Vice Principal Della Bartram and Events and Conference Manager Rita D’Silva.