Fighting for children’s literacy

Our Mission

We want to bridge the word-gap and boost life chances.

ChatterStars is striving to give children, especially those from lower socio-economic groups, a stronger voice and means to express themselves that will serve them now and later on down the road.

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Introducing Helen Prince

An English teacher, senior leader and advisor, as well as a mum of three, Helen has led English, literacy, and drama provision for over 20 years. Her experience has seen her take multiples roles in education, from Ofsted Inspector, to acting head, to author, advisor to several academy chains and AQA examiner.

Author and advocate

Author of a national literacy audit toolkit, Helen has worked on several cross-phase, literacy projects for schools and charities. To date, Helen has worked with over three hundred school leadership teams across the UK to improve focus on vocabulary, literacy, and English.

Addressing the Word-Gap

Since the release of the Word Gap report in 2018, Helen has been determined to highlight effective, explicit teaching of vocabulary. Her passion to address the word-gap has focused her work in this area, leading her to start developing ChatterStars as well as presenting six vocabulary webinars for both Oxford University Press and ASCL, attended by over 5000 teachers.

Learn more about Helen…

The Word-Gap Report

The term word-gap is typically used to refer to children in Early Years’ settings or pupils entering primary school with a vocabulary far below age-related expectations. However we know that this issue affects a wider range of children, and not just those starting school.

Learning the extent of the issue

Oxford University published an extensive language report after carrying out market research with more than 1,000 teachers. The results show that not only are the number of pupils with a limited vocabulary increasing, but that this is likely to have devastating knock on effects on their life chances.

Read more here…

Literacy being lost

69% of primary school teachers and over 60% of secondary school teachers believe the word-gap is increasing.

Limited Vocabulary

43% of Year 7 pupils have such limited vocabulary that it affects their learning and ability to engage with their work.

Ongoing struggles

Children with poor vocabulary aged 5 are four times more likely to struggle with reading and communication.

Mental Health Issues

These five year olds are also three times more likely to have mental health issues as they continue into adulthood.

ChatterStars as a solution

Driven by a passion to bridge this word-gap, Helen designed the ChatterStars app to enable rapid vocabulary acquisition. Designed to support schools and parents, the app enables children aged 6-16 to complete fun, personalised activities to build an empowered voice.

‘Presenting a new word in a visually engaging way… can help pupils to secure and retain their knowledge of that word’ – Bridging the WordGap at Transition 2020

Aligned to the National Curriculum

All puzzles on the platform are aligned to the British National Curriculum and provide schools with a go-to resource, with an effective little-and-often approach to secure rapid progress.

Personalised to child’s stage

The app personalises questions to a child’s vocabulary development stages, ensuring children learn exactly what they need to learn.

Designed for retention

Designed for maximum information retention with kinaesthetic use of repetition, image, sound and reward.

Rewards based success

A rewards-driven app engages a digital generation and is perfectly placed to bridge this word gap and boost life chances.

See Vocabulary Age

The only learning app that shows you a vocabulary age, ChatterStars enables schools and parents to actively track progress.

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