If you visit a school that uses Chatta well something is immediately stands out. Children are talking. They’re thinking out loud. They’re writing things you wouldn’t expect them to write. Teachers are moving quickly, building resources to make learning accessible ‘live’ in the moment, aiming high for everyone in the room, not just some of them. Independent success is expected, by both staff and students.
Here are ten ways Chatta schools make that happen:
1. Whole-class teaching with audio-visual scaffolding
Chatta fits every subject and every outcome. Teachers build content live, modelling through images and talk, constructed in the moment, breaking learning into manageable chunks that every child can access. The barriers don’t get removed for some children while others get on with the main lesson. The barriers are removed for everyone, all at once, as a matter of course.
- Building knowledge that can be revisited
Chatta boards become a growing, accessible bank of knowledge. Children return to them. They retrieve from them. They build on them. For children who struggle to hold information in working memory, this isn’t a workaround, it’s effective teaching that works for every child in the room.
- Oral composition, simple, quick and frequent
With Chatta, children don’t memorise sentences and repeat them back. They compose their own, shaped to the style, purpose, audience and content of the lesson. This is oral composition at its most powerful. It unlocks writing, builds vocabulary and develops spoken language in the moment.
- Quick-paced teaching that holds attention
Chatta boards are built during the lesson, not prepared in advance and presented as a finished product. That live construction, visual, moving, responsive, holds the attention of children who find it hardest to stay focused.
- Preparing children for challenging transitions
Routines. Social situations. New environments. Chatta boards built live with children help them understand and process what’s coming, calmly, with clarity, with genuine comprehension rather than anxious uncertainty. Schools use this beyond the classroom too.
- Revisiting content simply and frequently
The most powerful thing any teacher can do is go back to what matters. Chatta makes that effortless. Boards are revisited, rebuilt, extended. Children encounter the same content in different ways, at different moments, until it genuinely belongs to them.
- Pre-teaching vocabulary, content and context
Before children read a text, write, or tackle a topic, Chatta gives them the language and knowledge to do it with confidence. Pre-teaching with Chatta isn’t a separate intervention, it takes minutes, it happens in the classroom, and it means no child arrives at the hard part without the tools they need.
- Sharing resources across the whole team
A Chatta board built in a classroom doesn’t have to stay in that classroom. Teaching assistants and colleagues access the same resources. There is consistency, familiarity and shared language across the whole team, and for children who need predictability, that matters enormously.
- Displays and exercise books that actually work
Chatta boards on classroom walls (as images or scanned through QR codes) and in exercise books are powerful resources. Children can return to them and revisit content to support their understanding. The step-by-step visual structure builds confidence and independence
- Aiming higher for the whole class
This is perhaps the most important part of Chatta. Chatta doesn’t give some children access to the lesson while others do something more ambitious. It raises the ambition for everyone. Children who would previously have needed support don’t need it anymore, because the lesson itself is designed so that every child can succeed.
Chatta is used in primary, secondary and special schools across the UK. It is a practical, effective strategy to make an impact and aligning with the central themes of the government’s Inclusive Mainstream Fund. Book a visit to a Chatta Hub School or an register for an online Demonstration Webinar.
