Beyond Phonics: Building Words through PLAY featuring Private Joke ®

What if your students could play their way to better language skills?

Join Olive Halsall, Founder of Private Joke ®, for a 45-minute interactive workshop designed to transform the way you teach listening, speaking, and pronunciation.

This is not another PowerPoint-heavy CPD.

It’s a creative, energising, research-backed session showing how word invention, humour, and morphological “chunks” can help students think like linguists, and laugh like humans.

Whether you teach French, Spanish, or another modern language, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand the difference between phonics (sound patterns) and morphemes (meaningful chunks).
• Use Private Joke ® tiles and cards to build word families, creativity, and confidence.

Connect these activities to the new GCSE MFL focus on phonics, spelling, and listening.

Embed quick, 10-minute “word-building warm-ups” into your classroom.

💬 Perfect for

MFL teachers (KS3–KS5)

Heads of Department exploring creative CPD ideas

EAL or literacy leads curious about morphology and word awareness

Anyone who wants their students to love playing with language

🕒 What to expect

45 minutes of interactive ideas & laughter

A peek into the Private Joke ® Educator Edition

Q&A + next steps for bringing it to your school

🎁 Bonus! All attendees receive:

An exclusive CPD discount for your school’s first Private Joke® workshop

💼 About the facilitator

Olive is the Founder of Private Joke®, a creative language-learning company on a mission to make multilingualism playful, inclusive, and unforgettable. She holds a 1st Class BA in Modern Languages (French & Chinese) with Business Management from the University of Birmingham, and an MPhil in Education from the University of Cambridge. Her workshops have been delivered in schools and corporate teams across the UK and beyond, blending humour, pedagogy, and psychology to help learners see how language works.

💡 Details

📅 Dates

Thursday 20th November, 20:00 - 20:35

Friday 21st November, 12:15 - 12:50

Sunday 23rd November, 08:00 - 08:35

📍 Location: Online (Zoom link sent upon registration)
⏱ Duration: 45 minutes
💷 Cost: Free