Speaking and listening

Curriculum Intent

At The Brent Primary School, we acknowledge the importance of oracy in the development of English skills. Therefore, we aim to equip our children with the skills and confidence to become eloquent speakers who are able to articulate and discuss a range of topics, in a variety of contexts. Through developing listening skills, they will be able to empathise, value and respect other people’s opinions.

Implementation

• Children are given regular termly opportunities to engage in debates. Focus for the debates are closely linked to either the focus text or the termly topic. This allows children to have the background knowledge and vocabulary to engage in the debate from a position of knowledge. Debating also focuses on the skills of the listener to refute or uphold a variety of viewpoints.
• Through Talk for Writing and Helicopter Stories, children have the opportunity to rehearse grammatically correct literary language. This also introduces them to a broader range of vocabulary.
• Children have regular opportunities to read and perform poetry. This gives children the opportunity to rehearse prosody and each repetition allows them to strengthen vocabulary and embed new words.
• Across Year R and Year 1, speech and language is carefully assessed and interventions are put in place to enable children to catch up quickly.
• All members of staff, at all levels, model grammatically correct speech and thus modelling the level of language we expect children to use.

Impact

In all aspects of their speech, children are expected to be confident and eloquent. Debating demonstrates their ability to evaluate topics presented to them and to articulate and defend their own viewpoints.