LiLaC Practitioner Network

LiLaC researcher-practitioner workshops

These workshops are aimed at bringing together researchers and practitioners working in child literacy, language and communication disorders. They are organised by Courtenay Norbury and Mandy Grist, Professional Advisor for I CAN. All meetings are free of charge and open to any professionals working with individuals with Literacy, Language and Communication needs.

 

Previous workshops

Social Communication workshop 2017

In Feburary 2017 we hosted a two-day workshop bringing together researchers and practitioners to share best practice in assessment, diagnosis, research and intervention.

This two-day workshop brought together leading scholars with the express aims of achieving consensus about the nature and assessment of social communication and pragmatic language disorder, setting the future research agenda, facilitating collaboration between researchers and practitioners, inspiring early-career researchers, and communicating these issues to practitioners and the general public.

 

Summer 2015: ‘Blue skies thinking: what would provision ideally look like? What are the barriers?’

This workshop was held on the 3rd June 2015 at Meath School, Ottershaw. During the first half of the session, Courtenay presented some initial findings from the first wave of SCALES testing. Following this, attendies worked in small groups to brainstorm potential intervention studies and ideal models of provision.

 

 

 

Autumn 2014: ‘English as an additional language: common strengths,  frequent challenges and distinguishing difference from disorder’

This workshop was held on the 4th November 2014 at Royal Holloway, University of London. Our guest speakers were Meesha Warmington, from the University of York, and Victoria Murphy, from the University of Oxford. Meesha presented her research on literacy and executive skills in Hindi-English bilingual children. Victoria discussed trends in language learning in children with English as an additional language and outlined some of the research that is being carried out by her lab. LiLaC lab member, Katie Whiteside, also presented some of her PhD research on risk factors for language difficulties in children with English as an additional language. In the last session of the workshop, all attendees discussed the challenge of assessing, and supporting, language and literacy skills in children with English as an additional language.

 

Summer 2014: ‘Models of provision: who gets what and why?’

This workshop was held on the 18th June 2014 at Meath School in Ottershaw, Surrey. John Parrott started the meeting by giving a talk on SEN reforms. Professor Courtenay Norbury and Dr Susan Ebbels then discussed Universal, Targeted and Specialist provision for children with language difficulties. They presented a model on how to determine which level of provision individual children need. Finally, Professor Gabriella Vigliocco and Dr Marta Ponari outlined their research on how children process and learn abstract words.