Concept Cat Intervention Trial funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and DfE Stronger Practice Hubs
The Concept Cat evaluation report by RAND Europe and University of Leeds is out now.
Concept Cat was delivered to 89 Early Years settings across three Stronger Practice Hub areas in England over the 2023-24 academic year.
Key findings are:
- Children in the settings who received Concept Cat made two months greater progress with learning concepts compared to those who did not. Because of issues with the outcome measure true progress may have been underestimated.
- Children in the Concept Cat settings also made greater progress with their early numeracy skills.
- Settings found the approach feasible to implement, and most were able to deliver it well.
- Settings that implemented Concept Cat also reported higher levels of parental engagement.
Thank you to the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and to the three Stronger Practice Hubs: Liverpool City Region and beyond, Brighter Futures and HEART-Midlands for your support and the Evaluation Team from RAND Europe and University of Leeds.
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.
Why did we do this project?
We know early years practitioners, children and families all enjoy Concept Cat. We regularly receive feedback about the progress children make because of Concept Cat activities. There have been some small research studies which have provided promising impacts for children.
Who was involved?
The project was supported by the Educational Endowment Foundation and the Department of Education and in partnership with three Stronger Practice Hubs. The teaching part of the project was run by the authors of the approach together with Better Communication CIC. The research was conducted by University of Leeds and RAND Europe.
The project was focussed on early years settings in three geographical areas: West Midlands, Greater Manchester and North West England.
What did it involve?
Settings involved in the project attended training.
Settings were then expected to teach one word per week. This involved 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. If your word of the week was ‘empty’ you could have the water tray, 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 are included, by words and activities in the setting being shared so they can support learning at home.
Support provided
All settings in the project were supported by a ‘Concept Cat Coach’ (CCC) from Better Communication CIC. These are specially trained speech and language therapists and teachers who visit settings each half term to model, coach and support. The CCC will organise group supervision with a 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 that were provided included a cat toy, puppet, Word Aware 2: Teaching language in the early years book, Word Bag and printed resource kit for Level 1 and 2 words as well as online access to video resources.