Squirrel Story Assessment vs Shape Coding

‘Squirrel Story Narrative Assessment’ is a narrative re-telling task for three to six year old children that yields a descriptive profile of a child’s development in six key narrative competencies. It complements the more formal assessment tools available to the speech-language therapist /pathologist or teacher. It was designed by speech and language therapist Judith Carey, in collaboration with Suze Leitão, designer of ‘Peter and the Cat Narrative Assessment’. Although the tool’s primary use is with children who have language delay and disorders, the assessment can be used for children with a variety of language needs whether the primary deficit is due to disorder, delay or language deprivation. 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. Squirrel Story is a useful tool for determining therapy goals, curriculum planning and establishing pre- and post-intervention data. The ‘Squirrel Story’ is not norm referenced, however guideline scores are presented from a sample of 100 children. The iPad version of the assessment uses the same profiling of language skills as our hard copy version but brings together an illustrated ebook with voice overs, audio recording, on screen profiling, dictation facility ( iPad 3 & 4 only), automatic report generation, distribute report by email. This enables assessments 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. 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 and Australian 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/