Shape Coding

Shape Coding Course - Wednesday 30th May, 2012, 9.30-3.30

For more information, please click here, or email info@moorhouseschool.co.uk or phone: 01883 712271

For an application form, please click here

General information about Shape Coding

The "Shape Coding" system was designed to teach grammatical rules to school-aged children with SLI. It has been developed over the last 11 years mainly for use with children in Key Stages 2 and 3 (aged 7-14 years) although it has also been used with younger and older pupils. It aims to use the visual strengths of many children with SLI by using a visual coding system to represent grammatical features of English. The system includes use of colours (parts of speech), arrows (tense and aspect) and shapes (syntactic and argument structure). It has been used successfully to teach children the following aspects of grammar:

  • Parts of speech
  • Questions
  • Past vs present tense
  • Noun-verb agreement
  • Verb argument structure
  • Passive vs active sentences
  • Dative sentences
  • Embedded structures
  • Conjunctions

 

Shape Coding CD

A CD of Shape Coding resources is available to purchase from the school. This contains a range of worksheets which have been produced in the school using Shape Coding. While this is not fully comprehensive, it contains lots of useful resources.

Four versions are available:

A. pdf version 1. You can print worksheets, but can't change anything. Colours as in published papers - £30

B. pdf version 2. We've recently swapped the colours for verbs (to blue) and prepositions (to yellow) as verbs are the most useful to colour code and  blue is more visible than yellow. This version has the new colours on it - £30

C. Word version 1. You can change worksheets as you like. Colours as in published papers - £50

D. Word version 2. This version has the new colours on it - £50

If you would like to purchase any of these CDs, please email Susan Ebbels:  ebbelss@moorhouseschool.co.uk

 

Shape Coding discussion forum

A newly formed discussion forum is available at yahoo. Anyone with an interest in Shape Coding is welcome to join. This will enable members to share ideas and information with each other. To join please either email  shapecoding-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or join via the group website http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shapecoding

 

Evidence of effectiveness of Shape Coding

Ebbels, S.H. (2007). Teaching grammar to school-aged children with Specific Language Impairment using Shape Coding. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 23, 67-93. Link

Ebbels, S.H., van der Lely, H.K.J., and Dockrell, J.E. (2007). Intervention for verb argument structure in children with persistent SLI: a randomized control trial. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 50, 1330-1349. Link

Ebbels, S. and van der Lely, H. (2001). Meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for children with severe persistent SLI. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 36(supplement), 345-350. Link


Ebbels, S.H. (2008). Improving grammatical skill in children with specific language impairment. In Norbury, C.F.., Tomblin, J.B. & Bishop, D.V.M (Eds.), Understanding developmental language disorders: from theory to practice (pp. 149-174). Hove: Psychology Press. Link