Chatty Kids Class (CKC)

​Launch of the Chatty Kids Class (CKC)
Today was an exciting day at St. Mary’s Junior Boys’ School with the renaming of our Language Class to The Chatty Kids Class.
The Language Class was set up over twenty years ago and since then hundreds of children have passed through its doors. It was set up to cater for children presenting with significant difficulties with oral communication (receptive and expressive language and speech intelligibility) thus impacting on their ability to communicate with others and access the curriculum. The class takes a max of seven children, both male and female from four to seven years eleven months. Children spend one to two years in the class depending on their needs.  
The Language Class has one Teacher, access to an SNA and a Speech and Language Therapist two days per week. We follow the normal curriculum and regularly link in with the mainstream teachers in our school. We follow Junior, Senior and First-Class cycles in our class and our main objective is to improve the child’s understanding, vocabulary, sentence structure and speech intelligibility. As these areas improve the child can become a more efficient and effective communicator. Our focus in the class is to increase the child’s self-confidence and self-esteem around oral communication. This will facilitate their social interaction and allow them to return with confidence to mainstream class.
After twenty years being referred to as the Language Class, we decided it was time to give the class its own title and we involved the children in choosing the name. We chose the Chatty Kids Class (CKC) as it represents, in a fun way, what we are trying to achieve. We want the children in our class to be able to chat freely and confidently in a variety of speaking situations and to be able to access the school curriculum so that they can achieve their full potential.
The Nenagh Guardian designed our Chatty Kids poster and the new name was launched today by Mr. Gunnell (Principal), Orla Galvin (Class Teacher), Anne Coady (Speech and Language Therapist), Margaret Cleary (SNA) and our six pupils (Ollie, Alex, Ava, Eli, Abbie and Jack).