Jean Gross CBE, 2015

Why work on spoken language matters so much - for literacy, learning and life

Fantastic practice from across the country- the teaching and learning strategies that make most difference

Poor communication skills impact on...

Educational achievement Behaviour/vulnerability

Mental health

Employability

Criminality Disadvantage Cycle

•Vocabulary at 5 a powerful predictor of GCSE achievement

2/3 of 7-14 year olds with serious behaviour problems have language impairment

40% of 7 to 14 year olds referred to child psychiatric services had a language impairment that had never been suspected

47% of employers say they can’t get recruits with the communication skills they need

65% of young people in young offender institutions have communication difficulties

Children from low income families lag behind high income counterparts by sixteen months in vocabulary at school entry

The number of pupils identified as having speech, language and communication needs

inannual DfE school census has increased by

72 per cent between 2005 and 2011

The amount of time television (adult and child programmes) was on in the home when child was under two predicted achievement at school entry. As this time increased, so the child’s score at school entry decreased.

Roulstone et al , 2011Investigating the role of language in children’s early educational outcomes,Research Report DFE-RR134

Vocabulary at age 5 has been found to be the bestpredictor of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood were able to‘buck the trend’ and escape poverty in later adult life

The Effects of Weaknesses in Oral Language

on Reading Comprehension Growth (Hirsch, 1996)

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

Readin

g A

ge

Level

Chronological Age

Low Oral Language in Kindergarten

High Oral Language in Kindergarten

5.2 years difference

For Year 5 children with poor reading comprehension, an intervention to boost oral language skills made more difference to reading comprehension than an intervention directly teaching reading comprehension skills (Developing Reading Comprehension, Clarke et al, Wiley, 2013)

Nursery/YR children who took part in an oral language intervention (Nuffield Early Language Intervention) showed significantly better reading comprehension in Y1 than control group (Fricke, 2012)

ICAN’s A Chance to Talk whole-school initiative – children involved made on average 50% more progress in reading at key stage 1 than previous cohorts

Children receiving specific small group language intervention made accelerated progress academically. 90% of them met or exceeded the progress expected for all children of their age group in reading, 69% in writing and 76% in maths.

‘How to teach pupils to write well is first to get them to speak well.’,

Listening

Speaking

Reading

Writing

Learned

Used

Taught

Listening

Speaking

Reading

Writing

Learned

first second third third

Used most next to most

next to least

least

Taught least next to least

next to most

most

Teachers should develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject.

Pupils should be taught to speak clearly and convey ideas confidently using Standard English. They should learn to justify ideas with reasons; ask questions to check understanding; develop vocabulary and build knowledge; negotiate; evaluate and build on the ideas of others; and select the appropriate register for effective communication.

They should be taught to give well-structured descriptions and explanations and develop their understanding through speculating, hypothesising and exploring ideas. This will enable them to clarify their thinking as well as organise their ideas for writing.

Teaching listening

Teaching children to listen

Class A - Before Intervention

45%

25%

30%

Adequate

Moderate

Severe

Teaching children to listen

Class A - After intervention

63%

37%

0%

Adequate

Moderate

Severe

Why work on spoken language matters so much - for literacy, learning and life

Fantastic practice from across the country- the teaching and learning strategies that make most difference

The talking classroom

• A place to talk • A reason to talk• Support for talk

A place to talk

It doesn’t have to be expensive

© Elizabeth Jarman

© Elizabeth Jarman

© Elizabeth Jarman

Good practice

• A place to talk• A reason to talk• Support for talk

A reason to talk

Class discussion

‘Classrooms where teachers talk less and children talk more. Classrooms where teachers scrap the mechanistic reliance on hands-up , ask more open-ended questions (why? how?), give thinking time, make space for collaborative conversations and oral rehearsal of answers, and then always ask pupils – rather than us – to comment upon the answer they have just heard.’(Barton, 2011).

Bouncing

‘Thank you for making that point, Jo. Andrew, what are your thoughts on what Jo just said?’

Teachers can extend this to ‘Can you build on what Jo just said/ summarise what she said/ compare her ideas with Andrew’s/ decide whether you need to ask Jo for more detail/give reasons for agreeing or disagreeing.’

Take maths ....

• Hot seating – child in centre is a number and others have to ask questions to find out what the number is

• Snowballing – What can you tell me about 24? Find 3 facts as a pair then choose 5 facts as a group of 4, 8 facts as a group of 8...

• Think-pair-share- Deciding the best way to investigate a question like how many people would be able to sit in the school hall

A few more ideas....

• Jigsaw – expert groups could learn about different ways of presenting data (line graphs, pictograms, bar graphs) and then home groups could be given some data and asked to choose which is the best way to represent it

• Envoys – give each group some data to represent and then envoys go and look at how other groups have done it

Barrier games

• One child to use coordinates to enable the other child to reproduce the picture first child holds

• Both children have an identical set of photographs. One child chooses one and describes it . The other child has to pick out the photograph from their set

• One child makes a 3-D shape using linking cubes, Duplo or Lego and describes to partner how to make

A few more ideas....

• Make a maths podcast – groups first explore a question like ‘Do teachers usually drive small silver cars?’ , then make a podcast about their methods and findings

Good practice

• A place to talk• A reason to talk• Support for talk

The sad tale of Three Billy Goats Gruff....

• Actively teaching the skills of listening, working in groups

• Using talk frames • Actively teaching vocabulary

Support for Talk

Support for talk – working in groups

• Teaches pupils how to hold a reasoned discussion, tackling problems in groups through talk.

• The approach has been rigorously evaluated using experimental and control groups. There were significant impacts on attainment in science and maths, and in non-verbal-reasoning.

Thinking Together approach

Talk frames

Year 1• They are the

same because…………………

• They are different because…………………is…………and…………is……………

Year 6• In some ways………and…..are alike. For

instance they both………………………..• Another feature they have in common

is that………………………• However they also differ in that…. For

example……………..whereas…………….• The similarities/differences seem

more important than the similarities/differences because…….

Vocabulary building

Vocabulary acquisition