Spoken Language

Spoken language is a crucial part of the children’s entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum therefore spoken language underpins the whole curriculum. Spoken language provides the children with the opportunities to develop and extend skills and an opportunity to express their individual interests, thoughts and ideas.

Oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. It is also a route to social mobility, empowering all students, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life.

In the Early Years and Foundation Stage children will develop their listening, attention and understanding and speaking, so that they can:

listen attentively and respond to what they hear with relevant questions, comments and actions when being read to and during whole class discussions and small group interactions
make comments about what they have heard and ask questions to clarify their understanding
hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges with their teacher and peers
participate in small group, class and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary
offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate
express their ideas and feelings about their experiences using full sentences, including use of past, present, and future tenses and making use of conjunctions, with modelling and support from their teacher.

We use the NELI (Nuffield Early Language Intervention) Programme for both whole class lessons and as an intervention in Reception. The NELI intervention is the best-evidenced oral language intervention in the world with a series of randomised controlled trials and independent evaluations showing that it brings about educationally meaningful improvements.

Throughout Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, children will:

listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers
ask relevant questions to extend their understanding and build vocabulary and knowledge
articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions
give well-structured descriptions and explanations
maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments
use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas
speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English
participate in discussions, presentations, performances and debates
gain, maintain and monitor the interest of the listener(s)
consider and evaluate different viewpoints, attending to and building on the contributions of others
select and use appropriate registers for effective communication.

Spoken Language Long Term Plan

Progression

Spoken Language Lessons and spoken language opportunities across the curriculum use the oracy framework to develop the physical, linguistic, cognitive and social and emotional skills needed to be successful in these.

To help children to remember the strands of this framework, we use actions and symbols and each classroom displays relevant child friendly posters, which are referred to during the lessons.

Each week, we add a Talk at Home suggestion to the website (via X), which links to the weekly Whole School Collective Worship based on British Values and our SCARF values. We also share our music of the week with families so that everyone can listen and talk about it at home.

We use Concept Cartoons is some of our spoken language lessons linked to science.

We use Explorify to practice our describing, debating, justifying and hypothesising skills, we love the Odd One Out and Zoom In – Zoom Out activities.