Peter and the Cat vs Shape Coding

Peter and the Cat Narrative Assessment, for children aged 5-9 years. 'Peter and the Cat' is a narrative re-telling task that yields a descriptive profile of a child's development of key narrative competencies. It was designed by speech and language pathologists, Leanne Allan and Suze Leitão in collaboration with the teachers and principal of a Language Development Centre in Western Australia following more than seven years of development and testing. Narrative sampling allows the capture of key skills required in the transition to a literate style of language so critical for school success. In addition, sampling oral language beyond the sentence level provides information on broader communicative competence. This established assessment is used by therapists, teachers and researchers across the world and is recommended in the recent influential publication, 'Developing language and literacy: effective intervention in the early years', Julia M. Carroll et al, 2011. 'Peter and the Cat' is a useful tool for determining therapy goals, curriculum planning and establishing pre- and post-intervention data. The iPad version of the assessment uses the same profiling of language skills but brings together an illustrated ebook with voice overs, audio recording, on screen profiling, dictation facility (new iPad only), automatic report generation, Dropbox and email connections, enabling an assessment to be made quickly and efficiently with less preparation time. The final report, together with the audio recording of the child's re-tell, can be transferred to a desktop computer via email or Dropbox. The report is in plain text so it can easily be incorporated into other reports or case files. The voice-overs for the story can be selected from UK, US, Australian and South African speakers. Issues of confidentiality have been taken into account by password protecting data.

Please try the free Lite version before purchase to ensure all functionality will work on your device. SHAPE CODING® by Susan Ebbels is a flexible app designed for teachers and speech and language therapists / pathologists to use with children and young people who are having difficulties producing and understanding English sentence structure and grammar. It uses the SHAPE CODING® system which has been shown in several research projects to help children and young people with language disorders increase the length and complexity of sentences they can understand and use and to improve the accuracy of their sentence production. The SHAPE CODING® system uses a visual coding system to show the rules for how words are put together in sentences, to develop the child’s understanding of spoken and written grammar and to develop their ability to use grammar successfully to express themselves. The system includes use of colours (word classes), arrows (tense and aspect), lines (singular and plural) and shapes (syntactic structure). These are all included in the app, but the professional controlling the app can choose which features display for individual students. Multiple “teachers” can use the app and each “teacher” can have multiple students. The app is personalised for each student. The app is designed to be flexible so that professionals can adapt the levels and information displayed to suit the current levels and targets of individual students. The default first setting for each new student includes only basic sentence structures. Further complexity can be turned on (and off) by the “teacher” and individual settings are preserved for each student between uses. The app is equipped with a basic set of words which can be inserted into the shapes to make sentences. However, additional words can be added for individual students, or indeed for all students working with a particular “teacher” (this can be useful for names and topics which are common across a class of students for example). These can either be added before a session with a student, or during a session and can be saved for future use if desired. The app uses text-to-speech, so that students who struggle to read can also use the app. This app assumes a certain degree of familiarity with the SHAPE CODING® system. For more information see www.shapecoding.com. Training on how to use the SHAPE CODING® system is available from https://training.moorhouseinstitute.co.uk/. For a demonstration of some of the features of the app see https://shapecoding.com/demo-videos/, and for Frequently Asked Questions see: https://shapecoding.com/app-info/faqs/. Follow us on Twitter @ShapeCoding, Facebook @ShapeCoding and Instagram @shape_coding or if you have any problems or feedback, please contact us at training@moorhouseschool.co.uk Please review our privacy policy https://shapecoding.com/privacy-policy-apple/