English - Speaking & Listening
Speaking & Listening at The Grove
At The Grove, we understand the importance of being able to articulate and explain our ideas.
Oracy plays a huge part in our curriculum, reflecting vital development in our pupil’s academic and social development. Teachers support pupils to speak in Standard English at all times whilst they are at school.
There are a range of opportunities to talk across the curriculum as this is a major factor in developing their learning and enabling them to become reflective learners. Pupils are supported to talk about their ideas, helping to consolidate their learning. In addition to making formal presentations and participating in debates, pupils are challenged to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas. Each class takes part in a class assembly, alongside termly performances, such as the Nativity for Phase 1, Easter performance for Phase 2 and a puppet show for Phase 3.
Bringing Reading and Speaking & Listening together, Book Talk is a wonderful opportunity the children and the teacher to discuss images or extracts from texts, in a planned and structured session, which focuses on engagement with the ideas in a text. Central to book talk is dialogue, and it is an excellent opportunity to foster Dialogic Talk within the classroom through the use of strategies such as sentence stems and talking points and allow them to build on or challenge a peer’s point of view, in a safe space.
Book Talk takes place once a week for at least 20 minutes. Following this, Reading Recommendations take place. This gives the children an opportunity to ‘BYOB’ (Bring Your Own Book) in and present their views and ideas about a text to their peers.