BirminghamSymposium

Time
8.30 - 9.00	Coffee and Registration
9.00 - 9.15	Introduction and Welcome	Dirk Foch, Managing Director, Renaissance Learning
9.15 - 10.00	Author Presentation Tommy Donbavand Tommy writes for a number of magazines, such as the Times Educational Supplement, Practical Professional Child Care, Creative Steps and Scholastic’s Junior Education. He was also one of the writers for the hit CBBC series, Planet Cook and pens occasional tales from the island of Sodor for Thomas & Friends magazine. As a novelist, Tommy wrote five titles for Egmont Books’ Too Ghoul For School series. In addition to his writing and acting, Tommy also runs creative writing workshops in primary schools across the north of england, teaches writing to adults in the north east and organises storytelling courses for Surestart in Northumberland and beyond.	Read Tommy's full biography by clicking here.
10.00-10.30	SSAT	Kathy Heaps
10.30 - 10.45	Coffee
10.45 - 11.30	Bucklers Mead School "Yes We Can!" presentation will contain information of how our school is trying to motivate and encourage students to read for pleasure. The presentation will contain student performance data; details of Accelerated Reader and how our school is running the programme and other motivational aspects that we have developed.	Anne Clark
11.30 - 12.15	Holmesdale Technology College Caroline Roche shows how she was able to help an English teacher persuade her management team to give her a substantial sum of money for Accelerated Reader in a school with no library. The plan is to restore the school library within 5 years, by popular demand. She will demonstrate how using Accelerated Reader and free web tools you too can to put reading back at the heart of the school, and create a groundswell which will either raise the profile of your existing library, or put a library back into a school which no longer has a school library.	Caroline Roche
12.15 - 1.00	Lunch and Book Signing with Tommy Donbavand
1.00 - 1.45	Author Presentation Andy Briggs Successful scriptwriter with scripts sold to Hollywood and in Europe, including FOREVERMAN which was commissioned by Paramount Pictures (producers: Stan Lee and Robert Evans). HERO.COM and VILLAIN.NET are the first two in a double series of books - the series and the anti-series - for a young-adult audience which were bought by Oxford University Press at auction.	Read Andy's full biography by clicking here.
1.45 - 2.30	Nine Stiles “Our first year” – an overview of introducing Accelerated Reader at a large secondary school by staff & students	Claire Williams
2.30 - 2.45	Coffee Break
2.45 - 3.30	Author Presentation Ali Sparkes Journalist and broadcaster who can’t help making stuff up. Fortunately she only makes stuff up in books, leaving her journalistic reputation intact. Ali, who lives in Southampton with her husband and two sons, has always loved adventure stories about kids who poke about in woods, about kids who are having a hard time but can still be brave and amazing, about kids who live an ordinary life until something extraordinary happens to them. Dax Jones is all of these and he’s the hero of the new Shapeshifter Series, published by Oxford University Press.	Read Ali's full biography by clicking here.
3.30 - 4.00	Book Signing by all Authors