Oracy, Writing and Drama

Oracy

The golden thread of this school is securing oral language communication and literacy from incredibly impoverished and delayed starting points. Everything we do is designed to teach children how to talk and communicate.

Teaching and learning of oracy is categorised into 4 categories: cognitive, linguistic, physical and social. 

Embedding planned talk in every lesson across the curriculum is key and an expectation. 

• Teachers plan for a variety of different types of talk on the continuum of exploratory to presentational talk. 
• Tower Hamlets sentence stems are displayed in classrooms to support teaching and learning, are modelled by adults and built into every lesson.  
• Voice 21 resources support the rigorous planning of talk to include purpose, structure, scaffolds and reflection.  
• Groupings, space, protocol and roles are planned so that children have a scaffold to ‘hang their learning on’ such as providing question prompts and sentence starters, modelling expected responses and celebrating children’s successes. ‘Kagan Structures’ are planned for and used to structure talk sessions.  
• Colleagues use the ‘Birmingham Toolkit Speaking and Listening’ assessment to support their universal and targeted offer for pupils.

Vocabulary Learning - Word Aware 

We use the STAR approach to teach children new vocabulary:

Selected, Taught, Activated and Reviewed

which allows children to embed the new words they hear in the high quality texts they are exposed to, use them when they speak and in turn use these same words in their writing. 

English an an Additional Language

31% of Arbourthorne pupils speak English as an additional language, and we focus on turning home languages into a powerful cognitive tool rather than a barrier to English acquisition with targeted intervention with an EAL teacher, EAL specialists in school and from strong LA team, translanguage opportunities- allowing children to use their full linguistic repertoire to build understanding, boost comprehension of complex concepts, develop deeper metalinguistic awareness and foster positive identity, confidence and engagement. 

Writing 

Talk and collaborative learning are key aspects of our approach to teaching writing. We use the writing process (above) advocated in the Writing Framework to inform our writing sequence model.

In reception and year 1, where the focus is on transcription, the writing process for composition is less relevant. Oral composition is considered to be an outcome in itself and is taught separately to transcription. 

Fluent transcription (handwriting and spelling) skills are a critical focus for the Early Years and Key Stage One. Handwriting and spelling skills are taught via dictated sentences, particularly at the beginning of Y1 where children are not transcriptionally fluent but are orally competent. 

Dictated sentences are provided as follows: 

• the teacher says a sentence out loud 
• teacher and pupils count the number of words 
• teacher reminds children of letter formations and sentence demarcations
• teacher repeats the sentence with the pupils and holds it for them as they write
• the pupils can write the sentence
• teachers increase the challenge by asking pupils to include additional information (such as an adjective) or extend the sentence using conjunctions such as ‘and’

The writing stages of development are identified as: 

Fine motor skills

Preliterate – markings begin to resemble pictures and letters

Emergent – beginning to match letters to sounds, writing resembles words in the environment, familiar letter strings

Transitional – clear relationship between letters and sounds (as far as experience allows) initial sound / final sound – medial sound lags behind

Fluency – phrase writing becomes sentence writing – difficulties in holding sentences until transcriptional fluency is attained

Pupils who are struggling with transcription are a priority across school. Pupils who cannot form letters correctly are identified and taught accordingly.

The writing process is likely to be used only at the sentence level in year 2 and may sometimes be completed orally. For example, a planning process may ask pupils to identify apt words for improving their sentences before their composition. Similarly, simple revisions can include strategies such as reading their sentence aloud to the class and receiving feedback on how they might improve it to make it more compelling for the reader. Again, the focus remains on transcription for pupils who are gaining independence and accuracy. 

By KS2, all independent writers dedicate time to researching, developing ideas, reading around the topic, and visiting relevant settings. Before planning a piece of writing, pupils in key stage 2 are provided with the opportunity to:

•  research and develop their ideas
• build a vocabulary bank 
• practise relevant sentence structures.

This research and preparation will significantly influence the quality of their writing. 

School Production - Montgomery Theatre 

A standing ovation for the children who performed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Scream’ ⁦⁦at The Montgomery Theatre. Superb acting, dancing, singing, music, stage and lighting. Mr Eddison’s genius script brought laughter and tears!

All children in Y5 and Y6 have the opportunity to perform in the annual summer production at the Montgomery Theatre in the centre of Sheffield. This performance brings together a culmination of all the skills in speaking, listening and performing that have been developed during their learning journey at Arbourthorne.