evaluation findings - the communication trust...no pens day wednesday 2016: evaluation findings 2 as...

Evaluation Findings

No Pens Day Wednesday

2016

Contents

Introduction 3

The growing numbers of No Pens Day Wednesday 4

Who took part? 5

How schools heard about NPDW 6

Schools who’d taken part before and reasons for taking part 7-8

Feedback about the NPDW resources 9-11

The impact of the day 12-13

No Pens Day Wednesday and changing practice 14-15

No Pens at Home 16

Media and web communications 17

Improvements 18

No Pens Day Wednesday 2016: Evaluation findings

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83% of respondents said that taking

part in NPDW 2016 raised their

awareness of speech, language and

communication needs. 95% said

they’d do things differently around

school as a result of their involvement,

and 25% of respondents reported

they had identified pupils who were

struggling with spoken language that

they’d not known about before.

Introduction

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No Pens Day 2016 saw the addition of 25 new lesson plans added to the as part of the year’s theme, ‘No

Pens at Home’. In addition to adding homework elements to new lesson plans, we also updated our existing suite of resources to ensure that there was at least one additional homework activity available per year group.

No Pens Day Wednesday (NPDW) 2016 was the sixth year of the Communication Trust’s national speaking and listening event. This year we were able to reach over 900 new schools and settings, taking our total number of sign ups to over 5,700! After the day, we held an online survey with schools that had taken part in order to find out what people had enjoyed about the day, what could be improved in the future and the impact that it had on increasing awareness of speech, language and communication. In total, over 150 people took part in our survey. This report summarises all of the important things we’ve learned.

As of 2016, over 5,700 schools and settings have signed up to NPDW since it started in 2011. The numbers have increased every year, with 792 total sign ups in 2012, 1,835 in 2013, 3,616 in 2014, 4,810 in 2015 and 5,724 in 2016. By our estimations, this means that No Pens Day Wednesday has reached a total of almost two million children and young people!

If you have any questions about No Pens Day Wednesday or this evaluation please get in touch with Jack Williams, Project Officer at The Communication Trust on [email protected]

�On social media, the #nopensday hashtag was used hundreds of times by schools on tweets and pictures, the majority of which were retweeted on our own twitter page @Comm_nTrust. The day before No Pens Day Wednesday, October 6th, was the Communication Trust website’s most popular this year, with a total of 8,436 page views!

�The most popular reasons for schools

and settings taking part were: “We

think it’s a fun and engaging initiative”

(78%) “To support our school/setting’s

focus on the spoken language

elements of the curriculum” (75%)

“We wanted to improve our pupils’

understanding of the importance of

speaking and listening skills” (73%)

“We wanted to improve staff

understanding of the importance of

speaking and listening skills” (68%)


The growing numbers of No Pens Day Wednesday... For No Pens Day Wednesday 2016, we had a total of 914 brand new schools and settings sign up to take part. As with No Pens Day 2014 and 2015, we have ensured that our figures are as accurate as possible by manually interrogating the sign up data to ensure that no duplicate schools are present.

In terms of individual children and young people reached by the event, this figure is even more impressive – using DfE school and pupil numbers data, we estimate this number to be almost two million pupils.

This takes our total to 5,724 schools and settings signed up to take part in No Pens Day Wednesday! It is important to take into consideration that the actual figures are likely to be significantly higher as we did not begin tracking sign ups to the day until No Pens Day Wednesday 2012. In addition to this, it is possible for schools to pass the link to the materials on to others once they’ve accessed it (although we try to discourage this), so it is very possible that there are a significant number of schools and settings accessing the resources whose details we haven’t been able to capture in our statistics.

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792 total sign ups

1835 total sign ups

3616 total sign ups

2012

2013

2014 4810 total sign ups

2015 5724 total sign ups

2016


Who took part?

Although we asked a question on this in the evaluation survey, the numbers reported below are taken from the interrogation of the 2016 sign up information.

As in all previous years, primary schools were best represented in the sign up data and this correlates with the fact that they are the most engaged audience across the Trust’s programme of work. Although the amount of new early years sign ups we received has decreased in 2016, it’s fantastic to see that there has been an increase in special school sign ups.

It’s also brilliant to see that there has been growth in the ‘other’ category, which includes universities, local authorities, pupil referral units, suggesting that as the popularity of the event increases, the day is reaching a more diverse audience.

It’s great to see that we retained a similar number of secondary schools and FE institutions to 2015, with a figure of 14% - this is a group that we are continuing to try and engage as much as possible with the event.

NPDW sign up breakdown

01020304050607080

Primary 67%

Early Years 6% Secondary and FE 14%

Special (primary and secondary) 7%

Childminders 1%Other 5%

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Table 1: Types of school/settings who signed up in 2016


How schools heard about NPDW

The table below shows how people heard about No Pens Day Wednesday this year. The direct email from the Trust was the way the majority of respondents found out about the event, with over half of No Pens Day participants discovering the day through this route. However, it’s brilliant to see an increase in respondents stating that they found out about it through their local authority or that they read about it in a news or media publication – both of these figures suggest that the reach and recognition of the day.

The most popular answers within the ‘other’ category included people hearing about the day from their speech and language therapists, from training courses and via internet search engines.

It is also pleasing to see that the ‘other’ category has grown by over 4% compared to previous years, again showing that people are learning about the day through a wide, diverse range of sources.

How people heard about NPDW

Table 2: How did you find out about No Pens Day Wednesday this year?

Direct email from The Communication Trust

Through another organisation

TES Resources website

Through another school/setting

Through your local authority

Read about it in a news or media publication

Through social media

Other

51%

25%

3%

5%

7%

6%

6

2%

3%


Almost 50% of respondents to the survey said that they’d taken part before – this is an encouraging statistic, as it shows that we’ve been able to retain a core audience base from previous No Pens Day Wednesdays, and also that we’re continuing to expand our reach by attracting new schools to the event.

There were a variety of reasons that made people decide to take part in the day. The most popular reason was that people felt that the day was ‘a fun and engaging initiative’, highlighting that the fact that the day seems to have widespread appeal amongst students and staff. It is also great to see that 73% of respondents took part in the day because they wanted ‘to improve our pupils’ understanding of the importance of speaking and listening skills’, as ultimately, this is one of the core aims of the day.

We also saw a 5% in increase in the answer ‘we have run it successfully before’, which again is a positive response, as it means that we are retaining participants from previous years who have enjoyed the day in the past.

We also saw an increase from both 2014 and 2015 in the number of respondents using No Pens to ‘support schools with meeting requirements around high quality teaching and inclusion as part of the SEND reforms’. This might suggest that respondents in 2016 were more aware of their responsibilities under the SEND reforms due to an increase of awareness and training, which is really pleasing to see.

It was also great to see that more schools are using the day to ‘improve staff understanding of the importance of speaking and listening skills’ as well as pupils – we’ve heard anecdotally that there have been many occasions in schools where teachers were initially reluctant or unsure about doing a day of speaking and listening activities, only to see how important communication skills are after the day has taken place.

Schools who’d taken part before and reasons for taking part

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Other

To support our school/setting’s focus on the spoken language elements of the curriculum

We wanted to improve staff understanding of the importance of speaking and listening skills

We think it’s a fun and engaging intiative

To support our school/setting in engaging with elements of the SEND Reforms around inclusion and high quality teaching

We wanted to improve our pupils’ understanding of the importance of speaking and listening skills

Recommended by another school/setting

We have run it successfully before

78.06%

Table 3: Reasons for taking part in No Pens Day Wednesday

75.48%

72.90%

68.39%

45.81%

40.65%

11.61%

6.45%


This is a selection of reasons given for the ‘other’ category. It’s wonderful to see a varied list of answers given, particularly schools using No Pens Day Wednesday to support dyslexic pupils:

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“We have a specialism in Dyslexia/SEN at our school and it would greatly benefit the pupils.”

“Communication is at the forefront of our Learning Centre Development Plan and it was a way to raise the profile of this in the Learning Centre.”

“Many of our students struggle with literacy so we thought it would be empowering learning without pens for a day”.

“We are working towards the Inclusive Dyslexic Friendly School Status award and I wanted to raise the profile of communicating without written words with teachers.”

“The teachers thought the lesson plans and resource ideas were great and really helped them to plan for the day.”


Activity Pack

Your guide to running the day

Put down your pens and

pick up your language!

No Pens Day

Wednesday

5 October 2016

Strategies for every classroomSupporting pupil’s listening skills

Why is it important to support pupils’ listening skills?

Listening is essential for learning. In schools and settings we expect children and young people to listen attentively, but we don’t always teach the skills and behaviours needed to do it. Often pupils don’t know what they need to do in order to listen and don’t know if they are listening well or not. You might find the strategies below helpful to support listening in your classroom:

Teach key behaviours that make up listening. Often we say ‘listen’, though we don’t always explain to pupils how they listen. It’s useful to make the component skills of listening explicit and to teach these in class, they are: E Sitting still

E Looking at the person who is speaking

E Thinking about what that person says

E Waiting your turn You can use the listening skills poster in class to remind children about these listening behaviours.

Reward behaviours and link back to listening

E Use simple, repetitive language when talking about listening; “good sitting”, “good looking”, “good waiting”

E Link behaviours that you see to listening “good thinking...that’s great listening”

E Warn pupils they need to use the behaviours “I need to you really look and think to help you listen”

E “Catch” children and young people doing good listening and praise their behaviours

E Give extra turns for good listening behaviours

Be aware that some pupils may find some of these specific listening behaviours difficult; use your knowledge of individual pupils to make sure you reward them for doing as well as they can with their listening


Page 1No Pens Day Wednesday | Staff information

The most downloaded resource of this year’s No Pens Day Wednesday was our 2016 activity pack, which reflects the trend established in previous years. In the table below, resources that are brand new or updated for 2016 or that have been are highlighted in blue.

It was fantastic to see that the addition of homework elements to our suite of lesson plans seems to have resulted in a user boost across the board – the usage of early years plans rose by over 50%, with primary lesson plans and special school plans seeing a user boost of over 40%.

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Table 4: Which resources did you use for you for No Pens Day Wednesday? Were they useful?

Feedback about the No Pens Day Wednesday resources

Answer Options Yes, we used this

Yes, it was useful

Primary lesson plans 81 80%2016 Activity pack 90 74%School poster 67 70%Early years lesson plans 46 74%Planning for lessons using speaking and listening as a focus 40 68%

Parent poster 34 59%Early years/primary/secondary/special primary/special secondary activity ideas pack 30 70%

School assembly materials 29 76%Parents talk homework ideas 21 48%Parents’ top tips 20 50%Key features of a communication friendly classroom 16 56%Secondary lesson plans 15 67%Ways of recording 13 54%Dyslexia Awareness Week Information 11 73%Strategies for every classroom 11 100%Sample staff meeting content 10 30%Special school key stage 1 and 2 lesson plans 10 60%Pupil Evaluation Tools 10 80%Special school key stage 3 and 4 lesson plans 9 44%Early years carpet session 8 38%Putting children and young people at the centre of your planning 8 50%

I CAN’s ‘Chatterbox Challenge’ 7 57%NPDW and the SEND reforms 6 17%Press Release 6 50%NPDW and the SEND reforms 5 40%Press Release 4 50%NPDW and spoken language in the new curriculum 4 25%Student led assembly materials 4 50%NPDW and What Works 3 33%NPDW and the Communication Commitment 3 0%SMIRA’s ‘Creating an anxiety free environment for children with selective mutism’ 3 33%

Working effectively with support staff on NPDW 2 50%NPDW and the BCRP 2 0%Makaton’s ‘All About My Senses - Touch’ 2 100%Media/eComms toolkit 1 0%Information on national prevalence levels 1 0%


Some of the feedback schools provided on the resources:

New:

“Lesson plans and resources were great.”

“Teacher lesson planning resources are very helpful. We re-used posters etc from previous No Pens Day at the school. We wrote post-day publicity from scratch.”

“The resources were of a very high quality and staff found them useful.”

“I have probably looked at all of the materials above and taken bits from it all. I plan a full days worth of lessons for all staff, Nursery to Year 6, so I will have explored and found interesting and valuable information in everything you put on your website, including links from the materials above. It really is a fantastic website and I have encouraged others to use it for both gaining more knowledge about the spoken word, as well as for ideas for activities, support and resources.”

Feedback from teachers and parents

“The kids absolutely loved it. It was new to our school so the kids were excited to do something different. Parents gave fantastic feedback as the kids talked about it for days afterwards.”

“Feedback from staff indicated that it made them think differently about their teaching, some found it challenging to do it for the full day, others welcomed the opportunity to experiment with new ideas.”

Opportunities for inclusion

“Rich discussions, developing an understanding of listening skills. Children were all at the same level - no ability groups needed. Fun activities from the website. Whole school activity. Kids reactions - they loved it!”

“Seeing children come out of their shell. Speaking so confidently and expressing their ideas, when they struggle to put their ideas in writing. especially EAL and SEND children, doing role play and engaging in activities that they would usually find difficult as they would have to write about it. Teachers planning was “wow” all these activities they planned for the children, it was amazing.”

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Doing something different

“Exposing children to different activities. Them communicating better with each other and building relationships with each other through fun tasks.”

“Getting teachers to think differently and raise the profile and importance of speaking and listening even with pupils with communication differences and difficulties.”

Children’s reactions, engagement and enthusiasm

“The children loved all the activities and it really made staff think about the importance of spoken language.”

“It was a very enjoyable and engaging day. It made us think more creatively about our teaching and particularly recording methods. The children were really engaged and the parents also asked lots of questions about what was going on.”

“The level of engagement of the staff and children was a joy to watch. No Pens Day really inspired their creativity and some of the outcomes were amazing.”

“The children’s enthusiasm for lessons! The lesson plans were great and engaged children well and it was a great opportunity for staff to focus primarily on speaking and listening skills which are sometimes overlooked.”

“How all of the children and staff were immersed in the day. The focus on other forms of communication was evident, with children signing their names to each other in the playground and informing our no pens police on any adults seen cheating!”

“The children’s engagement and enthusiasm. As soon as they know that ‘No Pens Day’ is happening they are excited about the challenges and activities they will be doing. We also keep the activities as a surprise for them and we observe the children asking other children what they have been doing, at break times. As a English Lead , I think it a great way to showcase and promote the different range of activities that can be used to encourage speaking and listening and collaborative work, alongside other curriculum objectives.”

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The impact of the day

83% of survey respondents stated that taking part in No Pens Day Wednesday had raised awareness of speech, language and communication needs in their school. Furthermore, 25% of respondents stated that as a result of taking part in the day, they had identified pupils who were struggling with their speech, language and communication development that they had not previously known about.

We have included a selection of some of the comments that we received below about how No Pens Day Wednesday has supported awareness raising and how the day has helped teachers to identify struggling pupils.

Raising Awareness:

“We are really good with speech and language and have our own on site, it did raise awareness that lots of fantastic lesson can be taught around improving speech and language needs.”

“We are aware of the profiles of our pupils as we are a very small school but it was useful to see how many of the young people developed over the week as they gained confidence in the activities and it highlighted specific areas that we are now able to address going forward.”

“Teachers have become more aware of strengths and difficulties of pupils in their classes. There is more understanding of the importance of listening and attention skills and giving clear instructions.”

“Helped us to engage more with and think about the needs of children who do have communication issues. Those who are involved with SALT. Highlighted the necessity of an inclusive curriculum. Children who normally struggle with writing thoughts, feelings, communicating number, have dyspraxia and dyslexia were excelling on the day.”

“Staff are more aware of the difficulties some children are experiencing with understanding and expressing themselves. It is all too easy for those children to slip under the radar as more outspoken children take over.”

“Personally has made me realise how speaking can be used a lot more during lessons to help those who struggle to communicate in writing.”

“It has made everyone aware, of speech and language needs across the school. by having a No Pens Day the teachers saw an improvement with spoken language and listening and the not so confident children participating in certain activities that they usually would have been reluctant to.”

“Key strengths and next steps have been identified by class teachers. Actions to address these next steps can be put into place in medium and short term planning for the next term.”

“As a driver in our school, we are aiming for the children to communicate verbally more often and to enable them to feel confident in this. It enables the majority of the class to engage in the learning and children (and adults) feel less restricted.”

“Teachers are more aware of how useful it can be to have regular lessons where the focus is SL&C rather than always a written outcome.”

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Identifying Struggling Pupils:

“Even the higher ability children struggled with some aspects of the day, for example: speaking for different audiences and genres. It highlighted to us that speaking and listening needs to have more of a focus in our literacy lessons.”

“It was interesting to gauge children’s perceptions about how they should adapt their speech when speaking to different people in various situations - children who are typically more able in reading and writing were not necessarily able when it came to adapting their spoken language.”

“A number of children were alerted to me by staff who felt their speech, language and communication skills were weaker than they should be.”

“One particular scenario was that an older child was not able to answer questions related to why children in a scenario would do something. His reply was always that it was a bad thing or a good thing, rather than give a suggestion as to why. This child has learning support already and this has helped us focus on his own individual needs to develop his questioning and speaking skills. Use of vocabulary and understanding of vocabulary was highlighted in the early years setting and the whole day highlighted the children that needed more support to follow instructions accurately.”

“Yes, some of the quieter children that we had overlooked were identified as having needs around SLCN.”

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No Pens Day Wednesday and changing practiceAn impressive 95% of survey respondents stated that they’d do something differently in their school or setting around speech, language and communication as a result of taking part in NPDW. This figure really emphasises the fact that not only is No Pens Day Wednesday having a significant impact in the short term, it is also having a long term effect on the way that schools think about speech, language and communication.

Below is a breakdown of the answers respondents selected most. A list of some of the comments made in response to ‘other’ is also provided.

Other:“Continue to liaise closely with our SALT team.”

“Find more resources and ways to use multi-sensory learning and visual stimulus.”

“We will make it a part of the school plan and involve parents in school.”

“Create a bank of resources and activities for all staff to access and share their own ideas. Staff to feedback when they have used a communication focus as a lead into other curriculum objectives.”

“Develop a Whole school approach to communication”

“We have started talking homework every weekend for Reception - Year 6 across the school”

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Table 5: Following on from No Pens Day Wednesday, will you do anything differently in school around speech, language and communication?

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Other responses

Focus more on spoken language objectives in planning for all lessons

Share more information with parents about communication skills

No

Run regular No Pens Day Wednesdays

Prioritise spoken language in staff development session/plans

Work on developing a more strategic whole school approach to communication

Find out more about the work and resources of The Communication Trust

58.71%

45.81%

33.55%

40.00%

16.77%

5.16%

23.87%

33.55%


The most popular action that schools said they would take was to ‘focus more on spoken language objectives in planning for all lessons’, with 59% of respondents to the online survey choosing this option, a 6% increase from last year. One of the key aims of the day is to give speaking and listening a bigger focus in day to day lessons, so it’s really encouraging to see the response that this action received. The second most popular option that schools picked was to ‘run regular No Pens Day Wednesdays,’ which was selected by almost 50% of respondents, highlighting the large impact that teaching professionals perceive the day as having.

In addition to this, over 50% of respondents to the evaluation survey stated that they’d be interested in finding out more about and signing up for The Communication Commitment. This shows that No Pens Day Wednesday is increasing people’s awareness of speech and language to the extent that they are looking into adopting a whole school approach to communication within their school, which is a very desirable result.

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No Pens at Home

For No Pens Day Wednesday 2016, each of the 25 new lesson plans added to the site featured a homework component as part of the year’s theme, ‘No Pens at Home’. In addition to adding homework elements to new lesson plans, we also updated our existing suite of resources to ensure that there was at least one additional homework activity available per year group.

Our primary goal was for the increased focus on No Pens Day homework to stimulate more adult-child interaction in the home and support families to understand the importance of language and communication as an essential skill that children and young people develop both at home and at school. There is evidence that parents benefit from an increased understanding of typical speech and language development and how children learn language, so it was our aim to provide this information within our homework materials wherever possible.

We were really keen to see how schools felt about the addition of these plans and it was fantastic to see that respondents found the homework elements of the lesson plans to be very useful:

“The homework was a great idea and I’ve kept the sheets for future reference. We liked the letters to send to parents and I included a few tips with the letter.”

“I like this - we need more ideas to get our parents involved.”

“I found them really useful, I think most teachers feel they always have to give homework out that can be recorded but by giving out no pens homework pupils are able to develop their speak and language skills.”

“It was useful to get ideas as generally teachers in our school do not set speaking and listening home works.”

“Great idea, will be looking more into this for next year and possible homework activities throughout the year.”

“A great idea and important for parents to speak to their children.”

“The links to homework were useful and could also have been applied as classroom activities. We chose to send out the top tips for parents as this concisely summarised the importance of developing communication skills at home along with ideas for how to do this.”

“It is a way of involving the family, and raising awareness of the value of speaking and listening skills.”

“No Pens Homework is a fabulous idea as I really push for parents to communicate more with their children and this is a great way to do it.”

“Although we didn’t use it this year, I think it’s a great idea to involve parents in the days activities. I hope that we can raise the profile of the day even further next year to get parents more on board.”

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Media and web communications

Press Coverage

It was brilliant to see that like last year, over 10% of respondents received media coverage about their day, with many local newspapers and radio stations choosing to report about the day. Amongst others, No Pens Day was featured in the Andover Advertiser, Blackpool Gazette, the Chester Chronicle, Chester Leader, Chester Standard, Corsham & Box Matters, Educate Magazine, the Liverpool Echo and on Radio City Talk and Radio Merseyside.

Social media

We also had our busiest and most successful social media interaction of the year on the day, with schools and settings using the #nopensday hashtag to share all of their fantastic activities with us.

The #nopensday hashtag was used hundreds of times by schools on tweets and pictures, the majority of which were retweeted on our main page.

This engagement was boosted further by a social media competition we ran, which awarded a £100 Learning Resources voucher to a randomly selected school using the #nopensday hashtag.

Web hits

The week leading up to No Pens Day Wednesday was the busiest on our website of the year to date – the main No Pens Day Wednesday page alone received 6,805 page views, over 50% more views than the second most popular page, What Works, with 4,363.

In addition to this, on October 6th, the day before No Pens Day Wednesday, the Communication Trust website had its most popular day this year, with an impressive 8,436 page views!

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#

#

#


Improvements

We’re always looking to improve the day year after year, and the fantastic feedback that we receive through our online survey is a key resource that allows us to do this. As with previous years, rather than giving respondents a set list of choices, we chose to provide a free text box to ensure that answers were as varied as possible.

It was wonderful to see that over a fifth of responses said there was nothing we could do to improve the day, other than continuing to provide more what we are doing already! Below are a selection of suggested improvements:

“I think that schools need to be brave and extend the day over longer periods of time. We should not be so focussed on having written evidence for every lesson, every day, every week.”

“More advertising channels, and send information to other agencies/professionals and councils. I feel that if more professionals were putting the idea of No Pens Day forward, then schools would be more willing to emerge themselves more fully in the days activities.”

“Continue to build on the bank of resources available on the website. Produce video clips of example lessons on the website. More training for teachers”

“Publicise additional resources further through email.”

“Continue to develop plans and ideas to support teachers linked to age related curriculum. Continue to send to schools in advance, at least 2 weeks before the planned date please.”

“Make posters/film clips more modern and engaging to pupils.”

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If you have any questions about No Pens Day Wednesday or this evaluation please get in touch with Jack Williams,

Project Officer at The Communication Trust on [email protected]

You can find out more about No Pens Day Wednesday, access the free materials and run your day anytime.

Visit www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/nopensdaywednesday to find out more and sign up.


2016

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