No Pens Day Wednesday is back! Wednesday 9th October 2013

No Pens Day Wednesday, a national speaking and listening event organised by The Communication Trust, is now in its third year. They now have over 1,500 schools signed up to No Pens Day Wednesday- why not join them!
To find out more and get ideas for planning your No Pens Day they have produced the 2013 activity pack available to download here. The activity pack provides more information about why schools should get involved with No Pens Day Wednesday, what it involves, some useful guidance for teachers about supporting effective talk in the classroom as well as a handy timeline to help you plan your day.
Alongside the activity pack, they are producing some exciting new materials to support schools getting involved in No Pens Day Wednesday 2013. These will be available via their website very soon and they'll be in touch by email to all those who register their interest once the new resources are available. They also currently have all the resources produced for last year's event available on the website to help you start your planning early should you want to.
New for 2013 resources include;
• Downloadable poster for display in schools
• Print out poster to send home to families
• Speaking and listening outcomes matrix for lesson plans
• A handy how to guide to planning a good speaking and listening lesson
• Working effectively with support staff  in speaking and listening lessons
• New primary and secondary activity ideas
• Follow on factsheets on No Pens Day Wednesday
To access these and the new for 2013 resources as they become available, please register your interest on the website here.
Please help them to make the day as successful and wide reaching as possible by circulating this one pager to any of your networks who may be interested in getting involved in No Pens Day Wednesday on Wednesday 9th October 2013. 

Did your school take part in no pens day today?

George being excited!

It was officially a day when schools should not use pens, rather the children talk and listen to mark the September theme for the Hello campaign. Unfortunately, as with everything the take up for this was not brilliant. In fact of the 10 schools to whom I mentioned it, only one took up the idea. St Peters C E School in Hixon bravely decided to go pen-less! My son was really excited at the prospect and was actually looking forwards to going to school (he's not the most keen under normal circumstances, which is nothing to do with the excellent school he attends, I might add!)

On the way home we had a great chat about what it must be like to be unable to speak or to have difficulty understanding what is said to you. Although he is well aware that as a speech and language therapist, I work with children with problems he had not really thought about the implications for the individuals concerned. If today has made just a few more children think about how dreadful it must be then it has been a success in my book. After all 1 in every 7 has a specific difficulty while 'many, many more' (Gross 2010) will be experiencing a delay which will hinder written language learning.

Join in with the activities of the Hello campaign at www.hello.org.uk