Evaluation Protocol: Speech Bubbles

The Speech Bubbles intervention aims to improve children’s communication and social skills by providing them with weekly creative drama sessions. The benefit to pupils’ communication skills is also thought to have an effect on pupils’ reading skills. This is an intervention targeted at pupils with below expected communication and social skills. During the sessions trained practitioners encourage children to tell, act out and reflect on their own stories by creating a safe and playful environment, promoting children’s communication, confidence and wellbeing. This is based on the Helicopter Stories pedagogical approach.1 Speech Bubbles is part of a broader programme of work entitled ‘Learning about Culture’, which aims to improve the evidence base around arts-based education programmes. This is coordinated by the Education Endowment Foundation and the Royal Society for the Arts.2 It consists of five programmes: two in Key Stage 1 (Reception and Year 1) and three in Key Stage 2 (Year 5). Despite the unique aspects of these intervention models, there are many similarities in how they are delivered and what they hope to achieve.

Evaluation Protocol: First Thing Music

The First Thing Music programme aims to improve children’s reading and social skills by providing them with daily music sessions. The sessions are part of a structured music education programme based on the Kodály approach. Students will learn the basics of music through daily singing and musical games with teachers who will be trained by music practitioners. Music education has been linked to improvements in academic attainment in areas such as literacy and language.1 First Thing Music is part of a broader programme of work entitled ‘Learning About Culture’, which aims to improve the evidence base around arts-based education programmes. This is coordinated by the Education Endowment Foundation and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.2 It consists of five programmes: two in Key Stage 1 and three in Key Stage 2

The Craft of Writing

The Craft of Writing (CoW) intervention provides a sustained ‘Arvon experience’ developing teachers as writers and is combined with a more explicit focus on pedagogical implications for the classroom. The intervention will be underpinned by a Framework of Craft Knowledge cocreated with professional writers. This will make visible what the teachers are learning about writing – the process of writing; linguistic choices; and narrative/poetic techniques – and it will be used to support teachers in integrating what they learn from the Arvon experience into their routine teaching of writing

Young Journalist Academy

Young Journalist Academy (YJA) is an intervention that establishes journalism programmes or ‘newsrooms’ in primary schools. Primary school pupils, typically in Year 5 (9 to 10 years old), receive training from YJA staff and then develop and lead their own ‘newsrooms’ in their schools. They produce journalistic outputs in various forms over the course of a school year. These outputs could include print, audio or video content, which are published for the school and on the YJA website for a wider audience. The programme has been developed to stimulate interest in journalism as well as improve pupils’ writing skills and motivation for learning

Power of Pictures

The Power of Pictures (PoP) is a programme that uses the creation of picture books to develop primary school pupils’ writing skills. Through its programme, PoP aims to enhance teachers’ understanding of the power of picture books and increase teachers’ comfort in and ability to teach using picture books to a range of ages. In the last year, the PoP team has worked with 65 teachers in 40 schools