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Good Practice Case Study

Watton at Stone Primary and Nursery School

School No: 270

Speaking and Listening

Why did we take part?

Over recent years much emphasis has been placed on the reading and writing skills of literacy. As a school, we came to realise that the speaking and listening aspects of English had been relatively neglected. Whilst we were able to identify many times when speaking and listening was happening, the discreet teaching of those areas was less obvious. Our wake up call was seeing Year 6 pupils struggling to talk about areas of interests to the whole school – they were not equipped with the necessary public speaking skills. As a result of this, we decided to take part in the Speaking and Listening Project.

What did we do?

We decided to use the Speaking and Listening Project as an opportunity for raising whole school awareness of speaking and listening and, therefore, raising the standards within this area. Having firmly placed the issue into the school improvement plan, two staff organised INSET training on using the Speaking and Listening box for planning, teaching and assessing. We asked staff to plan for the discrete teaching of speaking and listening as well as identifying cross curricular opportunities. We added a column onto our daily planning grids detailing which of the four strands (speaking, listening, drama and group discussion) were being taught or used in each lesson.

Having received the training, staff were asked what resources were needed to support the teaching and learning of speaking and listening. It was felt that purchasing low level ICT would be extremely useful and supportive. The school bought a Dictaphone for each class and a number of digital movie cameras. All of these have been well received and put to good use to develop speaking and listening skills.

We felt that a public speaking competition would help raise the profile of this key area. The uptake was fantastic. More than a third of all our pupils from Reception to Year 6 took part. Heats were held for each Key Stage with pupils choosing their own topic. The final was then held during our Open Day with children given the theme “What does it mean to be healthy?”. The standard proved to be high and the event extremely successful.

What has been the impact?

The profile of speaking and listening has clearly been raised with discrete teaching of this area of English evident. Formal assessment is now in place drawing from the four strands identified in the Speaking and Listening box. It is still early days to measure the impact on standards but the initial response from staff about pupil achievement is positive. Having a specific space for speaking and listening on our planning grids has proved invaluable – not only as a great reminder but also for identifying specific strands being taught/not taught. Pupils are using the Dictaphones and digital movie cameras for story telling, film making, recording group discussions etc in a wide range of subjects.  We feel we have made enormous leaps forward in our provision of speaking and listening opportunities. We have laid some secure foundations to continue to build from in subsequent years.