A Chance to Talk
Reading is important, but it's also good to talk. Around 50% of all children start school with poor or delayed language skills. Left unaddressed, 75% of them will leave primary school with substandard literacy skills. 'A Chance to Talk' is tackling this problem by piloting new models for teaching communication to 4-7 year olds. The pilot programme alone will help more than 4,000 children across the country.
The grant recipient
I CAN is a registered charity set up to promote communication skills and to break down the barriers faced by children with a communication disability.
A Chance to Talk
What it aims to do
- pilot the large scale use of a new model of intervention that improves the communication skills of children with a specialist need or whose background has restricted their language development
- evaluate the impact and cost of the model to make a case to government
How it works
The pilot project has several components:
- language specialists work with 24 clusters of schools to support teachers with whole class, small group and one to one provision
- a new assessment tool will identify children who require additional support
- a programme of additional support - this is currently being devised and will include the use of volunteers
- information and training for children and parents
The three year pilot programme will support more than 4,000 primary school children, over a third of whom will have speech and language difficulties. In an early evaluation of the model being tested, teachers said that their pupils became more confident in class and made more rapid academic progress.
The funding
SHINE's grant will help A Chance to Talk expand its pilot within Greater Manchester.
Funding: £90,000 to I CAN, over three years (2009-12)
Visit A Chance to Talk on the I CAN website
