The Tall Ship Schools Project

Professor Joy Stackhouse, Dr Judy Clegg and Dr Kate Trott.

As part of the University of Sheffield´s Centenary celebrations in 2005, staff, students and alumni participated in the Tall Ship Challenge. The venture raised £32,000 to promote the communication skills of local children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Department of Human Communication Sciences (HCS) piloted the Tall Ship Project in 2006-7, in collaboration with the Learning Year and schools from the south east area of the city. The Project offered training to Foundation Stage 2 teachers and teaching assistants to help them support children who were showing signs of speech and language difficulties. The Project was positively evaluated and ran again in 2007-8.

In 2007-8, ten schools and/or nurseries participated in the Project. Eight of these were mainstream settings that had also taken part last year: Arbourthorne; Manor Lodge; Phillimore; Pipworth; Prince Edward; St Theresa´s; Woodthorpe and Wybourn. We were delighted to be joined this year by staff from two special education settings: Norfolk Park and East Hill Secondary. For the first time, the training was offered to nursery staff (Foundation Stage 1) as well as to those in Foundation Stage 2.

The Project was again managed by Professor Joy Stackhouse, Dr Judy Clegg and Dr Kate Trott from HCS, in association with Margaret Booth and Mary Davey from the Learning Year. Judy Clegg and Kate Trott offered support to individual schools in between the training sessions, and Jenny Leyden (HCS) joined the team from October to December 2007. Dr Maggie Vance and Dr Hilary Gardner (HCS) also contributed to the training sessions. All HCS staff on the Project are qualified speech and language therapists.

The involvement of colleagues this year from the local Early Years Speech and Language Therapy Service was warmly welcomed. Dana Taylor contributed to joint planning between University and Learning Year staff and, along with Jane Staton, sat in on some training.

The training sessions once again addressed the areas that had been identified by school staff at the pilot stage of the Project as those of key interest to them, namely: Vocabulary; Attention and Listening; Conversation Skills. The aim was for staff to take or adapt ideas from these sessions, run them with groups of children and monitor children´s progress on the activities. Additional in-house training was also piloted in several settings. There was greater emphasis on Feedback and Sharing sessions this year, since opportunities to meet colleagues and share good practice had proved extremely successful during 2006-7.

Feedback from training and sharing sessions was very positive. Once again, participants valued highly the opportunities to meet and discuss good practice with colleagues from other settings, and to have questions answered. They felt the training information was accessible, useful, and delivered to a high standard, using engaging presentation methods. Ideas suggested for resources and activities were popular. Contact with project workers and inclusion of special schools in the programme were welcomed. Participants felt involved as a result of the regular opportunities to give feedback on sessions in order to shape future ones. Staff from several settings commented that they now felt confident to carry on the Project more independently in their own contexts.

The project will run for a further year, a main aim being to prepare the materials developed so far for dissemination. On November 14th there will be a presentation of certificates and a folder of Tall Ship materials to settings participating in 2007-8. This will enable staff to disseminate training to colleagues. New project directions will also be outlined. These will include the offer of in-house training to a wider staff base, using existing materials on Vocabulary, Attention and Listening or Conversation. Also planned is the provision of linked information and discussion opportunities for participants through a University website. In addition, new training sessions on the links between spoken language development and emerging literacy have been identified by past participants and Learning Year colleagues as a useful extension of the Project. These would help support the current national initiatives `Every Child a Writer´, `Every Child a Reader´ and `Every Child a Talker´ as well as the National Year of Reading. We look forward to the new voyage!

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the Project this year.

For further information please contact Dr Kate Trott or Professor Joy Stackhouse