Conversation for Social Interaction (CoSI)

Conversational ability is central to social integration with peers and is critical for oracy (which has recently been prioritised by the UK Education Secretary).

Good conversational ability is important for developing better peer relationships, while difficulties in this area are linked to poorer emotional and social outcomes. Recent changes to government priorities also highlight how oracy has an important role in developing good literacy skills and other educational outcomes.

The effects of unmanaged social communication difficulties (i.e., difficulties with using language in a social situation) can have persistent effects across a person’s lifespan. Our programme aims to address some of these needs.

Ultimately, we want this website to host free resources to teachers, so anyone can access training and teaching ideas on social conversation.

Find out more about our programme content by clicking on the ‘CoSI Programme‘ tab.

To access the content of each unit, FIRST CLICK ON THE ‘REGISTER’ TAB to provide us with a few brief details (e.g. name, email address, location) in order to receive a username and password.

We ask for your name, email address and location because our funder and universities require us to demonstrate the breadth and depth of how our programme has impacted schools and children. To this end, we would like to email you once per year to ask you a few brief questions about if and how you used our programme and / or materials. We will not share your details with any third parties.

If you encounter any difficulties with registering, please email cosi@kent.ac.uk and one of our team will assist you.

Our CoSI programme entails a series of six units of work, which can be broken down to suit the teacher’s timetable. It is anticipated that it would be presented over 12 weeks (2 weeks per unit). Click on our ‘CoSI programme‘ tab to view unit topics. Over these six units, we cover topics such as:

• Why conversation is important
• Why different conversation styles are all okay
• How to use relevant comments to build on a conversation topic
• How to use questions to find out about your conversation partner
• How to be an active listener and show you are interested in someone else
• Thinking about another person’s interests to start a conversation

In each unit we provide:

1. A unit overview with learner objectives

2. Direct teaching materials, including:

• A session plan
• Slides
• Videos (integrated into the slides)
• Suggestions for whole group discussions

3. A structured task – typically a game that focuses on new skills

4. A social chat task – allowing peer-to-peer practice in a naturalistic setting

5. Highly guided materials to support effective feedback for children

Training resources

We also provide short training video clips including a clip about how best to provide individualised feedback to children on their social conversation as well clips illustrating how to set up and play some of the games.

This is a Nuffield-funded project, led by the University of Kent, in partnership with the University of Manchester, the University of Sheffield and University College London (see our ‘People‘ tab). Our COSI programme has been co-produced with teachers from the beginning. This started with a long period of consultation in the summer of 2022, which included a national questionnaire, detailed teacher interviews and teacher focus-group discussion. This helped us establish our first draft of the programme, guiding our development of teacher training materials and child-facing activities and materials.

In the first phase of our work (Spring and Summer, 2024), Nuffield funded us to further develop the programme with four schools. Two schools were in Kent and two were in the North West UK area. By working closely with teachers in these schools, we trialled the existing materials for acceptability. Through weekly meetings we shaped the activities and the materials with the teachers to meet their recommendations.

We have also been exploring the best ways to assess the children’s conversational ability.

We have updated our materials and programme in response to what the teachers told us in phase one. Currently we are carrying out our second phase of testing in schools (three in Kent, three in the North West UK), which will continue until summer 2025. Again we are asking teachers and schools to run the programme in their class, then give us feedback on its feasibility during individual interviews and a ‘participating teachers’ focus group.

Non-participating teachers focus groups

We are also seeking advice from a wider group of mainstream, upper primary teachers, and we will host focus groups to explore teacher views on our resources and teaching/training materials. If you would like to find out more about taking part in one of these focus groups, please email cosi@kent.ac.uk or one of the email addresses on our contact page.