(could this page be the same page as the bit about the corpus on our research page?)
We are working with Oxford University Press and using the Oxford Children's Corpus to find words to use in our experiments in schools. The Corpus is the world's largest(?) database of words used in books for children and stories written by children themselves. The team at OUP collect all the words in the books most commonly sold for use in schools(?) and put them all into a database. In addition, every year when BBC Radio 2 run their 500 Words story writing competition, all the words from all the stories children submit, are also entered into this database. This database is a unique source of data about the ways in which children experience and use the written word at different ages and can help us develop a more detailed picture of what happens to reading skill as children read a widening range of texts and are exposed to an increasing range of different types of words.
link to BBC R2 site and 500 words video
You can read more about BBC Radio 2 500 Words here
Link to OUP 500 Words page
You can read more about the Oxford Children's Corpus here