The communication crisis in the classroom

A figure that has been increasing in recent years is the number of children entering school without being able to effectively speak, which is frustrating for the child and has the propensity to create negative connotations and feelings towards school.

Currently, accessing timely speech and language therapy is a massive hurdle for schools and families. As Amy Warner Allen, a qualified speech and language therapist and co-creator of Chatterdillo, points out, “The earlier that you intervene, the better the outcome.”

However, waitlists for a single initial NHS assessment can stretch anywhere from 12 to 18 months. For a young child, going a full school year without adequate communication support can drastically impact their socialisation, overall well-being, and ability to engage with the curriculum.

Meanwhile, teaching assistants and educators are often handed overwhelming, paper-heavy resource packs and expected to deliver specialist interventions with little to no training.

Enter Chatterdillo: The game-changing edtech solution

Chatterdillo was born out of real classroom struggles. During her time as a one-to-one teaching assistant, Amy experienced this lack of support firsthand, telling us:

“I was given a pack of speech and language resources and I was just told to kind of crack on and I had no experience with those interventions. I had no idea what I was doing.”

Realising this was a widespread issue affecting both educators and children, Amy teamed up with software engineer Jamie Welsh to create a solution. Chatterdillo is an online, game-based speech and language intervention platform designed to fill the gap while children wait for official therapy, with key features including:

Built-in screener

This feature helps educators to easily identify children who might have speech, language, and communication needs.

Evidence-based gamification

One of the most famous phrases in the world is ‘learning through play’, as such, the platform is incredibly fun, but it avoids empty gimmicks. As Amy explained to us,

“The more fun that you’re having when you’re learning, the more motivated you are to engage in something and the better your outcomes will be… but it has to be rooted in some sort of evidence.”

Zero prep time

No more printing, cutting, or laminating! Interventions are automated and ready to use, complete with built-in tutorials so staff can just click a button and run with it.

Avatar customisation

A recent feature allows kids to build their own profiles and personalise characters, making the daily interventions something they actively look forward to.

Making a real difference

Empowering educators and saving time

During our chat, Amy explained Chatterdillo further and it feels as though one of the best parts of their tool is that educators using Chatterdillo don’t need any specialised training. The straightforward design means anyone can hit the ground running.

Reflecting on her own time carrying out interventions, Amy notes, “I’d kind of turn up to sessions with these massive bags of all of these things. And I’d spend hours and hours and hours like prepping everything. And all of that prep work is just completely cut out with Chatterdillo.”

In fact, schools currently using the platform have reported saving up to 3 hours per week on prep work—time that can now be spent supporting even more students.

Life-changing outcomes

As mentioned, early intervention is critical, and the results speak for themselves.

In just under two years, Chatterdillo has sparked some incredible breakthroughs. Amy shared one standout success story about a child with selective mutism who was completely nonverbal:

“Since using Chatterdillo for interventions they’ve now started speaking independently which is such a huge win… just to know that we’ve made something that’s making a really big difference in people’s lives is amazing.”

Bridging school and home

Learning shouldn’t stop at the school gates. Chatterdillo offers a unique access code for parents, allowing children to practise their activities at home.

“Being able to practise things in different environments with different people just helps you really kind of learn the skill, embed it into your kind of daily life and use it in different contexts, which is super important,” Amy says.

Seamless integration with Skolon

Discovering and implementing new edtech tools can be a headache, which is why Chatterdillo’s integration with Skolon is so vital for the modern digital classroom.

By accessing Chatterdillo through Skolon, schools can easily find and deploy the platform across various classrooms and embed interventions seamlessly into the daily school routine.

“Having the access and having it embedded into a school routine improves an outcome for a child because they’re just having an opportunity to use something that they may not have had that opportunity to use if they didn’t have a platform like Skolon,” Amy explains.

Ultimately, having Chatterdillo integrated into Skolon makes things as easy as possible for busy educators, ensuring children aren’t missing out on life-changing support.