LANGUAGE SKILLS

Listening and Speaking

Each morning begins with a brief whole class oral activity.

Use this time to:

• Talk about the day, date, the weather chart, children who have birthdays and any special events for the day.

• Check attendance: take a roll call to identify children present / absent

• Hear a few children share their news, ‘show and tell’ about a picture or object, talk about the diary, sports, concerts, topical events and story-telling. Try to listen to every child’s news at least once every two weeks.

Listening and Speaking Activities that target specific skills at least twice a week, concentrate on developing 2 – 3 specific skills at a time

Listens to Stories and Express Feeling

•  Listens to Instructions and responds appropriately
• listens without interrupting, taking turns to ask questions for clarification
• listens, enjoys and responds to picture and word puzzles, riddles and jokes
• talks about personal feelings
• sequence: Tells a story with beginning, middle and end
• Answers closed and open ended questions
• role play in different situations
• participates in class discussions
• use of terms:
• sentence, capital and full stop

Phonics

• Identifies letter-sound relationships of all single letters
• Builds words using sounds learnt (e.g. words with:

-at	-et	-it	-ot
-ut	-ag	-ig	-og
-ug	-an	-en	-in
-un	-am

• Uses consonant blends to build up and break down words (r and I blends)
• Recognises common consonant digraphs at the beginning and end of a word, e.g. sh, ch and th

ch	ck	ng	sh	th
church	clock	sing	fish	path
couch	quack	long	brush	teeth
peach	back	ring	wish	booth
pitch	pack	lung	wash	bath
punch	sock	song	dish	mouth

• Recognises plurals fs” and ‘es’) and word endings (‘ing’ and ‘ed’) aurally
• Groups common words into sound families

Listens to stories and expresses feelings about the story

• Listens to instructions and announcements and responds appropriately
• Listens without interrupting, taking turns to speak and asking questions for clarification
• Listens, enjoys and responds to picture and word puzzles, riddles and jokes
• Talks about personal experiences and feelings
• Tells a familiar story which has a beginning, middle and end
• Answers closed and open-ended questions
• Role plays different situations
• Participates in class discussions
• Uses terms such as sentence, capital letter, full stop