Our aim is to ensure that all children gain language and communication skills necessary to provide them with the foundations for future success. We recognise that spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing and is therefore hugely important in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are vital for developing their vocabulary and grammar and their understanding for reading and writing.

At Langshott we provide our children with a language-rich environment in which adults engage children in high-quality dialogue and direct teaching so that they can:

• articulate what they know and understand
• develop their knowledge across all areas of learning, using the vocabulary they need to support learning.

We ensure that children are taught the required skills for effective language and communication across the curriculum by:

• encouraging pupils to develop a capacity to explain their understanding of books and other reading, and to prepare their ideas before they write

• assisting pupils in making their thinking clear to themselves as well as to others
• helping children to articulate their ideas in well-formed sentences, by scaffolding, extending and developing their ideas
• developing and extending children’s language through careful and deliberate planning in each area or learning
• providing children with opportunities to repeat and consolidate vocabulary in different contexts
• ensuring that pupils build secure foundations
• teaching pupils to understand and use the conventions for discussion and debate
• enabling all pupils to participate in and gain knowledge, skills and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances
• actively encouraging and promoting effective communication though:
  • class discussins; in class reflection time; class assemblies; class discussions; School council; events within the community; children’s leadership; PSHE; team games and whole school events.

Children are taught when to listen, to know what good listening looks like, and they need praise.