Squirrel Story Assessment

‘Squirrel Story Narrative Assessment’ is a narrative re-telling task for three to six year old children that yields a descriptive profile of a child’s development in six key narrative competencies. It complements the more formal assessment tools available to the speech-language therapist /pathologist or teacher. It was designed by speech and language therapist Judith Carey, in collaboration with Suze Leitão, designer of ‘Peter and the Cat Narrative Assessment’. Although the tool’s primary use is with children who have language delay and disorders, the assessment can be used for children with a variety of language needs whether the primary deficit is due to disorder, delay or language deprivation. This established assessment is used by therapists, teachers and researchers across the world and is recommended in the recent influential publication, ‘Developing language and literacy: effective intervention in the early years’, Julia M. Carroll et al, 2011. Squirrel Story is a useful tool for determining therapy goals, curriculum planning and establishing pre- and post-intervention data. The ‘Squirrel Story’ is not norm referenced, however guideline scores are presented from a sample of 100 children. The iPad version of the assessment uses the same profiling of language skills as our hard copy version but brings together an illustrated ebook with voice overs, audio recording, on screen profiling, dictation facility ( iPad 3 & 4 only), automatic report generation, distribute report by email. This enables assessments to be made quickly and efficiently with less preparation time. The final report, together with the audio recording of the child’s re-tell, can be transferred to a desktop computer via email. The report is in plain text so it can easily be incorporated into other reports or case files. The voice-overs for the story can be selected from UK, US and Australian speakers. Issues of confidentiality have been taken into account by password protecting data.

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