Aims:

• Support people who face major literacy barriers
• Target high-value language gaps that currently put education, training and employment beyond reach
• Break the cycle of offending by targeting long-lasting life skills
• Engage people who have had a negative experience of education
• Support people with ADHD, Dyslexia, Autistic Spectrum, Speech & Language difficulties
• Improve communication, confidence and motivation
• Target the core-skills that lead to social independence and reduced reliance on staff

Description:
The Communicate Project is a software-based, literacy-intervention project. It allows specialist and non-specialist staff to identify people who have fallen behind with literacy, and to give them control of the language that makes daily communication possible.
 

The project works on a 10-hour intervention model, targeting the high-value language that allows any person to conduct 80 per cent of daily communication.

In 2014 Rapid English Programme, Nottingham and Reading won the Youth Justice Evidence Award for the work that was undertaken with children with literacy barriers, as well as those with learning difficulties.

The project follows a two-step process:

Step 1 - Diagnose (5 mins - 1 hour)
Get an immediate snapshot of someone’s literacy level, identify language gaps, then set priorities:

• Word recognition
• Reading comprehension
• Handwriting
• Paragraph building
• Reading aloud
• Conversation
• Grammar

Step 2 - Solve (1 - 20 hours)
Solve the highlighted language gaps in order of priority. 25 software-based teaching solutions are ready to go, designed to give learners control of the core elements of any language gap.

• High value vocabulary
• Core phonics
• Public speaking & reading aloud
• Sentence & paragraph construction in the past and present tenses.
• High frequency grammar rules

Implementing the Practice:

Case studies have been collated from:

• Reading Youth Offending Team (as well as their Effective Practice submission)
• Wigan Youth Offending Team
• Nottinghamshire Youth Justice Service
• Oldham Youth Justice Service

Contacts:

Case studies: