Testimonials
What particpating settings say about the project
SSLiC really gave us the opportunity to raise the profile of speech, language and communication across our whole school. Everyone now sees the value in it. And it’s when everyone sees the value in it, it is much easier to get people onboard.
We’ve been working with a lot of external agencies, like School Improvement Officers, Lead Early Years Teachers, and they’ve all noticed an improvement as well. So it’s not just me thinking like oh, actually is doing pretty well, like it’s been noticed by external professionals as well.
I think the biggest difference that SSLiC has made is that everybody is now very consistent in their approach and in their understanding about how to support spoken language. We made sure to include everyone in the project, teachers and support staff so that everyone can be empowered and everyone can sort of sing from the same hymn sheet, you know?
I knew that with the SSLiC Programme we were going to get the latest, up-to-date research about spoken language, which we could then use back in school Inclusion.
It continues to be on the agenda for our school in the sense of the way we operate. It’s now embedded in our classroom practice. It’s something that translates and starts from day one for a new member of staff and I guess, essentially, it becomes less of a project and more just a way of being and teaching.
Our SENCo was included in the communication team, I think it was a requirement that a leader went along to the first SSLiC Evidence Day in September and, really it makes total sense. That meant it formed part of our school development plan and everything we do as a school. It wasn’t just a bolt-on, it
was actually ingrained in what we were trying to do as a school anyway.
When observations are happening in school, it’s always the senior leaders are coming in and observing the class and what’s going on in the classroom, and actually having a peer observing them, I think they felt much more comfortable. It’s not been an observation as such, it’s about having those dialogues about their daily practice has been really, really helpful. It’s been really good professional development for us.
The CSCOT is so detailed, it covers so many areas, we would spend a good forty-five minutes to an hour in observing classrooms in our setting. And it is the CSCOT that gave us the real opportunity to see the areas that we needed to focus on. And I would say that’s made the biggest difference, because we could evidence what was going well and we could evidence our next steps and what we needed to change.
The SSLiC Review Day for us really was fantastic because of that research, but also just being able to hear what everyone else was doing… And we really enjoyed sharing what we’d been doing as well. It’s how you learn, isn’t it? It sort of reinforced what we were doing and having that opportunity to really analyse how successful we’ve been…And hearing other people and everyone’s done so many different things; and both of us have stolen so many ideas. So we’ve moved into different areas, little tips as to how it might work better if we tried this. And we’ve got a whole list of things that it might be nice to try, but also how we might measure success in the future.
Our SSLiC facilitator has been absolutely fundamental to the project. The wealth of knowledge that our facilitator had was huge and so valuable. And she made sure to keep things moving and keep our SSLiC project really at the heart and the focus of everything that was going on in our setting.
I think as practitioners as well, we don’t get much time to consider research as part of our drive and our action plans. So actually, taking the time to do that as well is very beneficial. And the great thing was that we were given a summary of the evidence at the beginning that we could take and apply in our school.