Cowley Hill
English
Cowley Hill English Speaking and Listening Curriculum Statement
Intent:
At Cowley Hill, our curriculum is designed with the intent to maximise potential of all of our pupils; intellectually, socially, morally, emotionally and culturally. We take every opportunity to encourage a love for learning within all of our pupils, based around a resilience for learning and achieving greatness. Most importantly we allow our children to learn in a safe and stimulating environment, where their views are valued. At the heart of good oracy is a dialogic classroom. Our classrooms are rich in talk, from effective questioning to constructive peer discussions and teachers use talk skillfully to develop and encourage critical thinking. There is a clear understanding in school of how talk aids teaching, analysis and higher order metacognition. Our intent is that all children can articulate their learning through five strands; Describing, Explaining, Convincing, Justifying and Proving, enabling them to communicate effectively with the world around them.
Speaking and listening is central to this and is developed from EYFS throughout our school, across the curriculum. We nurture children’s speaking and listening skills through a variety of approaches: exploratory play, story time, hot-seating and drama. We develop these skills so that our children are capable of expressing their own ideas clearly and confidently, in a safe and supportive environment, in all aspects and areas of their school life and into their future.
Implementation:
All staff in our school model the use of higher level vocabulary within their speech and expanding children’s vocabulary is a key focus from EYFS. We have developed and thoroughly implemented our Reasoning policy across the curriculum and this is helping children and adults reflect on the use of language within the classroom and develop this further. Subject specific vocabulary is embedded across the curriculum, through teacher modelling and in context. Contextual learning helps children to understand new words and supports them in including them in their work. This model is reflected in shared reading sessions, where children are given the chance to explore unfamiliar vocabulary and expand their knowledge of words. We are keen to model the correct grammar in speech, for example using ‘we were’ instead of ‘we was’ and encourage children to reflect this in their use of spoken and written language. Children are given the chance to orally rehearse ideas for writing regularly.
Each class take part in a termly assembly where they share their learning with parents and other classes within their key stage. This develops confidence and allows children to demonstrate their oracy skills while presenting.
Drama is used across all subjects to explore and engage children in their learning. This gives children the chance to embed vocabulary in shared activities along with the use of topic specific language repetitively they rehearse.
Impact:
In a safe and encouraging environment, children develop into confident communicators who listen, speak with kindness and empathy and explain with clarity and confidence. Children recognise that speaking and listening can lie at the heart of conveying character, and that through speaking and listening effectively, misunderstandings can be addressed and relationships enhanced. Our children confidently use the language of reasoning to articulate and explain their learning and the processes behind their thinking.
Curriculum Learning Outcomes - Work in progress