Oracy

At Thornhill Primary School, we understand that speaking and listening skills are fundamental to children's progress in all areas of the curriculum, and the need for effective oral communication is vital to develop and enhance life skills. Using strategies developed by Voice 21, we seek to develop children's speaking and listening skills as an integral part of the school curriculum and prepare children to establish positive relationships inside and outside school with the ability to communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas confidently and successfully.

Following the school values:

Respectful:

We encourage children to communicate orally with others, listen with concentration and respond to what they have heard. They are taught when to listen and what good listening looks like.

Resilient:

Children are given the opportunity to perform and present ideas to different audiences. They are encouraged to speak audibly and confidently.

Ready:

We provide a language-rich environment, where adults talk with children throughout the day, because we know the more children take part in conversations, the more they will understand once they can read, and the more vocabulary and ideas they will have to draw on when they can write. Listening to and talking about stories and non-fiction develops children’s vocabulary because they meet words that they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech.
Through enjoying rhymes, poems and songs, teachers build children’s strong emotional connection to language. The predictability of rhymes in poems and songs helps children to memorise and reuse newly acquired words and phrases.