On Wednesday 16th November, Fairley House School was delighted to welcome Professor Kate Nation as our guest speaker at this term’s Parents and Professionals evening. Professor Nation is based at the Department of Experimental Psychology at St John’s College, Oxford. She presented a stimulating talk about children who struggle with language comprehension and shared latest research findings about the precursors to such difficulties. Professor Nation reported that there is a strong link between weaknesses in oral language development and later comprehension difficulties. She highlighted that children who are ‘poor comprehenders’ can decode letters and sounds in the same way as other children, but find it hard to extract meaning from the written word. For instance, they may not understand subtle nuances in language nor grasp figurative speech. Towards the end of her lecture, Professor Nation summarised interesting new research by a team from the Centre for Reading and Language at York University. This has evaluated the efficacy of interventions to help children improve their comprehension skills. It has so far provided evidence that oral language activities which are not based on texts, but are similar in style to those used by Speech & Language Therapists, promote the greatest change over time. If you are interested in finding out more about the Reading for Meaning project, please visit http://readingformeaning.co.uk/.
Prior to the start of Professor Nation’s talk on Wednesday, she honoured the 21 graduates of the 2010-11 OCR Certificate in Specific Learning Difficulties by presenting them with their certificates. Professor Nation said she was very impressed by their ability to complete the one-year course while juggling full-time jobs and commitments at home. Amongst this year’s graduates were teachers and therapists from the Junior and Senior Departments. Ms Murray, the Principal, also thanked OCR tutors – Georgie Cooney, Sheree Cumming, Jenny Lim and Alastair Combes for their dedication and hard-work.
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