What is Concept Cat?
The Early Years are when children learn so much about the world around them. Talking and understanding are the bridge to this development, allowing children to interact with others and learn more. For example, when a child learns a word such as ‘first’, they can talk about how objects, people and letters can be placed in order.
Words such as ‘first, through, before, next and forward’ are what we call ‘concepts’. Concepts are words that are linked to ideas, and so really important for developing thinking. They are more than ‘just another word’.
‘Concept Cat’ is a whole class or group teaching method for early verbal concepts. It was developed by two leading experts in the field Stephen Parsons and Anna Branagan and is part of their ‘Word Aware’ approach. Concept Cat has been used successfully in a range of early years settings, nurseries and schools. The teaching process involves acting out a short story (with a toy cat), singing songs and providing play based opportunities for children. Families are encouraged to be involved too.
What is involved?
Settings involved in the project must attend training. This is three hours for the lead practitioner and one hour for other staff. All training is free and online.
Settings are then expected to teach one word per week. This involves acting out the stories and singing songs at group time. Small changes are made to the learning environment so that children have extra opportunities to learn about the word. For example, if your word of the week was ‘empty’ you could have the water tray and sand tray out that week and at snack time you could talk about empty plates and cups. A couple of times in the week the setting would talk about words that had previously been taught, by using a range of suggested activities. Families would be included, by words and activities in the setting being shared so they can support learning at home.
All settings will be asked to provide some simple data about their settings.
For Wave 2 and 3 settings, there will be slightly more data collected about children, including researchers visiting your setting to do a short assessment with children. Families can opt out if they wish.
Support provided
All settings in the project will be supported by a ‘Concept Cat Coach’ (CCC). These are specially trained speech and language therapists and teachers who will come into a setting each half term to model, coach and support. The CCC will organise group supervision with lead practitioners in the local area, to facilitate peer to peer learning.
Training is all delivered online by the authors of Concept Cat. This is three hours for the lead practitioner and one hour for all other staff.
Specific resources including a cat toy, puppet, Word Aware 2: Teaching vocabulary in the early years book, Word Bag and online access to video resources are all provided.
Recruitment is closed for this programme.