FPS Speaking and Listening Curriculum Statement

Intent
Our FPS 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 inspire 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.

Speaking and listening is central to our Curriculum and is developed from EYFS to the end of Year across the whole curriculum. We nurture children’s speaking and listening skills through a variety of approaches: exploratory play, story time, hot-seating, PSHE and through collaborative learning in Science and RE. 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 to Year 6. Subject specific vocabulary is embedded across the curriculum, through teacher modelling, 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 and guided reading sessions where children are given the chance to explore unfamiliar vocabulary and expand their knowledge of words. We have a Tier 2 Ambitious Vocabulary programme in which children learn, practise and apply new words. These ambitious words are displayed in classrooms and children are asked to give examples and explain their meanings in Friday Celebration Assemblies. 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.
Teachers regularly read to their children. We believe it is fundamental that children are read to and every class teacher reads and discusses the books with their pupils, pausing to discuss an unknown word or particularly well written phrases. Children are encouraged to ‘magpie’ words and phrases from their reading and from each other. We us Pie Corbett’s progression spine to influence the progression complexity of texts chosen across school.

To develop our children’s confidence in public speaking, we participate in Equal’s Trust Story Telling Evening, a wonderful event where in preparation, our pupils have worked with a story teller to write and practice their own piece of writing, which is then performed to parents from all the schools.

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 and embed the use of topic specific language repetitively. We have visitors to school, for example in History and Viking or Roman Centurion and the children are immersed in the experience of the whole day in character. Teachers also arrange whole day experiences in eg Victorian School Day or Super Hero Day. We have an annual Visual Literacy Day, where the whole school, including staff dress as characters from the film. The film is paused at various points for the children to act out a scene or create and perform their own piece of writing eg. ‘The Snowman’ by Raymond Briggs, our Year 5 and 6 children wrote a three act radio play.

We also run an after school drama club for children from Year 1 to Year 6 , which is often over-subscribed and run by a trained drama teacher. The children are encouraged to watch each other’s acting and then give feedback. This helps to develop children’s communication skills and self-esteem.
We have Christmas and Summer presentations performed by the Drama Club, which are of a particularly high standard. This teacher also provides 1:1 LAMDA sessions with those children who have a passion for Drama and several of our children are chosen to be part of the chorus in performances at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham.
As a whole school we have annually have three Christmas productions: EYFS, KS1 and KS2, this enables all children who wish to, to have a speaking part and builds their confidence and self esteem from an early age.

Our SCARF, PSHE, RE and SRE programmes of study are designed to give pupils the confidence to share their ideas, communicate a different point of view and create discussion. Children are encouraged to ‘build’ on each other’s suggestions, sift through different ideas and communicate their thoughts. Above all, they try to understand each other and alternative points of view.
Collaborative work across the curriculum is also helping to develop our speaking and listening skills. Children are to be given sufficient time to share and discuss their ideas, before recording.

Impact
Speaking and listening give us the basic skills we need to communicate with the world around us. Children are given a range of opportunities to develop these skills, in a safe and stimulating environment. The wide range of speaking and listening activities – which are weaved throughout our curriculum – help to develop ideas, vocabulary and confidence, as the more we talk, the more we pick up on different words that other people use.