Communication & Language

Our Curriculum Intent

At Pinewood we want our children to leave us with the oracy skills needed to succeed in life. Through our curriculum, we want to broaden our children’s vocabulary and enable them to be able to articulate themselves clearly. We understand that vocabulary gains are critically important to a child's development.  New guidance from the DFE (2021) also places emphasis on this. We know that the progress of our children depends on adults engaging them in high quality dialogue and direct teaching. We have a speaking and listening knowledge progression overview document which shows the progression from F1 to Year 2.

Developing Talk

We want our children to be able to articulate what they know and understand, to develop their knowledge in all areas of learning, using the vocabulary they need to support learning. We understand the importance of back and forth interactions with adults. These form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations children have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language rich environment is crucial. 

We also want our children to be able to tell stories, hold conversations and discussions and debate.  Improving communication and language runs through everything we do.  We use strategies including word aware, Makaton and Talk for Writing to support and enhance this. We make sure our curriculum is drenched with high quality, exciting, vocabulary rich texts. 

Listening

Children need to be taught when to listen and to know what good listening looks like. We support our children with this by having a signal to alert children to listen – At Pinewood we do this through rhymes such as ‘eyes on who . . .’ ‘hocus pocus . . . ‘ clapping and sometimes the use of instruments. We also show children what good listening looks like through the teacher’s own behaviour and by reinforcing and praising good listening, with clear  examples. This needs modelling, especially in the EYFS and regular reinforcement.