Spoken Language at White Rock

INTENT

Spoken Language underpins the the development of Reading and Writing. At White Rock, we want all children to develop a love of language. As such, we aim to ensure that Spoken Language skills are central to our curriculum and are developed from Nursery through to Year Six.  We believe that developing a rich and varied vocabulary, within a wide range of contexts, will enable our children to build positive relationships, understand and express their feelings and emotions as well as problem solve with increasing independence.

We enhance children’s Spoken Language skills in a variety of approaches: focusing on oracy during Guided Reading session, incorporating drama activities within our Writing journeys, facilitating high quality adult interactions, and highlighting and discussing key vocabulary throughout all of our curriculum subjects.

Progression of skills

Let's Think in English

As a school, we use Let’s Think in English (LTE). This is a teaching programme which helps pupils develop the higher-order skills needed for success in English. These include inference, deduction and analysis together with confidence and resilience when responding to unfamiliar texts.

Let's Think in English uses texts, images and videos to engage our pupils in discussion using high quality language. Lessons are largely oral, based on reading, open-ended questioning and structured group discussion which increases pupils’ reasoning skills and metacognition (structured reflection). This makes pupils more aware of their thinking processes and how they think most effectively. Pupils develop their higher-order reading skills (and subsequently writing) through group discussion and sharing their views.

Please click the link below to find out more about Let's Think in English.