At Chalfont St. Giles Village School, we want our pupils to have a strong command of the spoken and written word, whilst developing a love of literature. We want to develop their abilities to use language to think, explore, organise and communicate significant meanings thus enabling them to achieve their potential and develop self-esteem.
In this school, pupils will be given opportunities to interrelate the requirements of English within a broad and balanced approach to the teaching of English across the curriculum, with opportunities to consolidate and practise taught literacy skills. We will:
Children’s ability to speak and listen is fundamental to their language development, learning in school and social development. Talk underpins learning and thinking. Richness and variety of talk is important for all children.
Direct teaching of oracy skills is fostered at our school to enable our children to develop confidence and a repertoire of talk for different purposes and audiences. Links between oral and written language are encouraged and built on across the curriculum. We use a wide range of resources to support our work and train our staff to develop our oracy approach. This includes using Voice 21resources and training.
We aim to enable pupils to:
We ensure that pupils’ oracy skills play a significant part in their learning. We provide children with role play, real life situations, collaborative and problem solving opportunities to develop these skills.
Pupils will also be taught knowledge, skills and understanding through a wide range of activities, contacts and purposes including:
In the Foundation Stage the children work towards the Early Learning Goal for Communication and Language with its three aspects of listening and attention, understanding and speaking. The National Curriculum guidance for Speaking and listening in key stages 1 and 2 has been adapted and is included in our termly planning for literacy. Specific literacy and cross curricular activities may include:
We ensure that our children become confident, successful young people because of our commitment to the use of talking within the learning process. Children throughout their learning use talk partners, group work and whole class work to share ideas and develop their thinking. Role play, drama, discussion, debate, presentation and decision making play a significant part in the learning process. Within drama we encourage pupils to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles whilst also responding appropriately to others’ in role. In history the children will re-create scenes from the past and then brainstorm feelings and phrases that the characters may have said. In science the children have to plan an investigation with their group and decide what resources they will need. In maths pairs of children will discuss which is the best method for solving a problem and then share this with the whole class. This talk for learning supports the children’s thinking and enables them to learn from each other and structure their ideas.
In English lessons we use talk for writing strategies to encourage all of the children to verbalise their ideas before they write. For example, children throughout the school, within guided group work, might talk through shared story maps or make class word and phrase banks. This ensures that they have used the vocabulary and verbalised their ideas so that they are then confident to commit their ideas to paper. From Nursery to Year 6 we model quality talk for learning and for writing, and through guided work ensure all of our children become successful users of language and who are able to express themselves clearly and communicate effectively.
We regularly collate pupil voice to ensure our curriculum meets the needs of the children. As a result, children are exposed to a varied menu of experiences for a range of audiences and purposes, with high quality models. Through pupil interviews about the wider curriculum, children can articulate what they know and remember. They are confident and able speakers and can listen carefully in order to develop their thinking and ideas.
To measure the impact of our oracy curriculum, we regularly use pupils’ books to capture an insight into the impact on writing. Pupils’ work demonstrates the effectiveness of the curriculum where age-appropriate taught phrases and modelled strategies are developed over a sequence of lessons.