Developing talk in Reception
Castlefield School
School Context:
Particular challenges:
Focus Group:
· Year group – Reception. This is where I currently teach and the area in which I have most experience and expertise.
· The age related expectation at the beginning of Reception is competence (assessment of Secure) in the 30-50 months age band and some (assessment of Beginning) in the 40-60 months age of the Development Matters Statements in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Baseline assessments in September 2013 showed that 76.7 % of children in Reception are working below entry expectations. The children range from 22-36 months to 30-50 months with some children being assessed as low as the 16-26 months as they choose not to engage, observing their peers for as long as two terms. However, this has become less apparent this academic year in both the Nursery and Reception classes which is most encouraging.
Activities undertaken :
Much of our work in the Autumn term has been to focus on -
(Communication & Language – Speaking 30-50 months 1. Beginning to use more complex sentences to link thoughts; 2. Can retell a simple past event in correct order; 3. Uses talk to connect ideas, explain what is happening and anticipate what might happen next, recall and relive past experiences; 6. Uses intonation, rhythm and phrasing to make the meaning clear to others)
(Communication & Language – Listening & Attention 30-50 months 1. Listens to others one to one or in small groups, when conversation interests them; 2. Listens to stories with increasing attention and recall; 3. Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories.
(Communication & Language – Understanding 30-50 months 3. Responds to simple instructions, e.g. to get or put away an object.4. Beginning to understand ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions)
(Communication & Language – Speaking 40-60 months 7. Uses vocabulary focused on objects and people that are of particular importance to them; 8. Builds up vocabulary that reflects the breadth of their experiences; 10. Extends vocabulary, especially by grouping and naming, exploring the meaning and sounds of new words)
Activities and experiences have been planned to support the development of speaking and listening skills in both the Nursery and Reception classes. Simple repetitive texts have been used to enable the children to be introduced to, explore and use new/unfamiliar vocabulary in a variety of contexts. This has been done in a fun way with the use of talking boxes; talking tins; easi-speaks and story sequencers so they can listen to their own voices and become more confident in speaking aloud. Resources have not been put away, providing the children with the opportunity to revisit and rehearse activities within their play, often resulting in high quality observations being obtained for assessment purposes.
Much modelling has been done with children being asked to follow the given format/model. This has led to writing a class book; creating their own descriptions of the Gruffalo as well as beginning to write simple captions for pictures.
Activities/games played:
These can be used with any pictures/words in all areas of the curriculum and can be used as an activity with any age group.
Pass the bag/box/hat-
We have found this a useful and effective way of presenting new vocabulary, concepts or resources/materials to the children.
Materials :
How to play:
(1) We chose an animal from the book. The colour words were placed in the bag/box/hat. This was passed to the song. When the singing stopped, that child took out a colour word. Children were reminded of the sentence format to use “I see a ........ bear looking at me”. The children then said the correct sentence, depending on the colour selected e.g. “I see a red bear....” “I see a blue bear..... “etc.
(2) This was then extended to include choice of colour and animal. The colour words were placed in the bag as above. The animal flashcards were placed face down on the carpet. The game was played as above but this time, the children had to take a word out of the hat and then turn over an animal card. They were then asked to say the correct sentence. “I see a red dog”; “I see a yellow sheep” etc. This promoted discussion about whether we could have a yellow sheep, green horse etc., helping with simple comprehension of familiar words. The more able children saw the humour in this activity and later chose to continue to make up their own animals.
As the plenary, we devised our own class book based on the text. The children helped to create the sentences following the repetitive format of the text which were later written up for the book. The book was then made available for the children to access freely in the book corner. If this had been done later in the year, the children could have written the captions for the book themselves.
Dice game:
Materials :
How to play:
Similar to the ‘Pass the bag’ game, but have one dice with the colour words on and the other with the animal name. The children had to roll one dice to get the colour and the other to get the animal for our sentence.
“I see a purple fish looking at me.”
This helped to reinforce the correct order in which the words come within the sentence and made the children use both information words. “I see a fish purple looking at me.” or “I see a purple fish looking at me.” Which sounds right? Why?
Other game ideas:
· The cards made can also be used for other games such as – pairs – matching animal pictures; words; correct animal to the correct colour from the book etc.
· Kim’s game (the tray game) Place pictures or words from the story on a tray. Cover and take one away. Which one is missing? Games like this help to reinforce vocabulary and memory skills. This can be extended to children having to (1) tell their partner which one is missing or (2) writing on a white board.
· Guess who – “Who am I?” Base clues on the animals as they appear in the text.
· Story sequencer (available from TTS) – matching pictures; sequencing events; sequencing/re-telling the story depending on the messages pre-recorded by the teacher in each compartment.
This work led to us being able to focus on the characters and descriptive language in the story of ‘The Gruffalo.
Evaluation of impact on progress / writing :
Some children started in Reception with very little speech, preferring not to speak in front of the whole class or in small groups. This showed itself as (1) very low CLL results and/or (2) very low writing results due to children not giving meaning to their marks. The low CLL obviously results impact across all 7 areas of the EYFS resulting in children not demonstrating the expected on entry levels. Increased confidence has enabled some children to make significant progress in those areas requiring children to speak, demonstrating understanding of and using appropriate vocabulary within their day to day activities and child-initiated learning, for example speaking within familiar contexts and using vocabulary appropriately within their play. This in turn should enable them to move closer towards achieving the expected level in more areas in the EYFS Profile by at the end of their Reception year. Children have also become much more confident to make marks and share what their marks mean.
Opportunities have been provided for children to re-enact familiar stories and rhymes using puppets and sequencing pictures. Leaving teaching resources out for children to explore on their own has had a positive impact, with them choosing to use the resources, copy the words, and say the words from books used.
The teachers have commented on the fact that the children have started to include more information in their speech to make meaning clear to others. Some children are reflecting this in writing simple captions, showing a developing awareness of simple sentence structures.
Next steps:
· To continue to develop confidence in speaking in small groups and in front of the whole class.
· To continue to work on developing simple sentence structures orally before moving on to simple written formats. We can’t write it if we can’t say it!
(Communication & Language – Speaking 40-60 months 12. Links statements and sticks to a main theme or intention; 13. Uses talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events) This will lead to children working on the Early Learning Goals (ELG 1. Children express themselves effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs; 2. They use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future)
· Children to be encouraged to use longer utterances becoming more familiar with past and present forms. (Communication & Language – Speaking 30-50 months 5. Uses a range of tenses (e.g. play, playing, will play, played).
· Shared/guided reading session time to be used to reinforce oral language work on vocabulary and simple grammatical structures. (Communication & Language – Understanding 40-60 months 6. Understands humour, e.g. nonsense rhymes, jokes; 7. Able to follow a story without pictures or props; 8. Listens and responds to ideas expressed by others in conversation or discussion)
· Introduce a small language group for those children needing greater support with speaking and listening before being able to put pen to paper.
Appendix :
- School type : Large combined school on the outskirts of High Wycombe
- ·Size : Number on roll 444 plus a 30 place Nursery (morning and afternoon)
- Pupils eligible for FSM – 22.8%; pupils from minority ethnic groups – 92.7 % ; EAL - 79.7 %
- Special features – class sizes across the school are kept small with supports from Learning Support Assistants to help children to make a good level of progress and to help to narrow the gap by the time they leave the school at the end of Key Stage 2.
Particular challenges:
- Children start the Nursery or Reception classes with significantly below expectations in all areas of the EYFS, particularly in PSED and CLL. Much time is spent on transition, settling the children into their new learning environments and plugging this gap before they start in Year 1.
- Engaging parents.
- Last year the average EYFSP score nationally was 32.8%, at Castlefield it was 25.3%. Only 16.9 % of children achieved a ‘Good Level of Development’ compared with 55 % in Bucks and 52% nationally.
Focus Group:
· Year group – Reception. This is where I currently teach and the area in which I have most experience and expertise.
· The age related expectation at the beginning of Reception is competence (assessment of Secure) in the 30-50 months age band and some (assessment of Beginning) in the 40-60 months age of the Development Matters Statements in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Baseline assessments in September 2013 showed that 76.7 % of children in Reception are working below entry expectations. The children range from 22-36 months to 30-50 months with some children being assessed as low as the 16-26 months as they choose not to engage, observing their peers for as long as two terms. However, this has become less apparent this academic year in both the Nursery and Reception classes which is most encouraging.
Activities undertaken :
Much of our work in the Autumn term has been to focus on -
- Developing confidence to speak aloud and using simple utterances
(Communication & Language – Speaking 30-50 months 1. Beginning to use more complex sentences to link thoughts; 2. Can retell a simple past event in correct order; 3. Uses talk to connect ideas, explain what is happening and anticipate what might happen next, recall and relive past experiences; 6. Uses intonation, rhythm and phrasing to make the meaning clear to others)
- Simple vocabulary development – comprehension and use of day to day vocabulary; topic words and new words encountered in specific texts
(Communication & Language – Listening & Attention 30-50 months 1. Listens to others one to one or in small groups, when conversation interests them; 2. Listens to stories with increasing attention and recall; 3. Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories.
(Communication & Language – Understanding 30-50 months 3. Responds to simple instructions, e.g. to get or put away an object.4. Beginning to understand ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions)
(Communication & Language – Speaking 40-60 months 7. Uses vocabulary focused on objects and people that are of particular importance to them; 8. Builds up vocabulary that reflects the breadth of their experiences; 10. Extends vocabulary, especially by grouping and naming, exploring the meaning and sounds of new words)
- Expanding speech;
- Use of descriptive language;
- Developing confidence to ascribe meaning to their mark making alongside learning grapheme phoneme correspondences to enable children to begin to make phonetically plausible attempts at simple words and captions.
Activities and experiences have been planned to support the development of speaking and listening skills in both the Nursery and Reception classes. Simple repetitive texts have been used to enable the children to be introduced to, explore and use new/unfamiliar vocabulary in a variety of contexts. This has been done in a fun way with the use of talking boxes; talking tins; easi-speaks and story sequencers so they can listen to their own voices and become more confident in speaking aloud. Resources have not been put away, providing the children with the opportunity to revisit and rehearse activities within their play, often resulting in high quality observations being obtained for assessment purposes.
Much modelling has been done with children being asked to follow the given format/model. This has led to writing a class book; creating their own descriptions of the Gruffalo as well as beginning to write simple captions for pictures.
Activities/games played:
These can be used with any pictures/words in all areas of the curriculum and can be used as an activity with any age group.
Pass the bag/box/hat-
We have found this a useful and effective way of presenting new vocabulary, concepts or resources/materials to the children.
Materials :
- Bag, box or hat
- Key vocabulary, pictures or objects to go with the text – in this case colour words and animal pictures/flashcards.
- Music or song “This is the way we pass the ……. pass the ……., pass the ……. This is the way we pass the ……., all around the circle.”
How to play:
(1) We chose an animal from the book. The colour words were placed in the bag/box/hat. This was passed to the song. When the singing stopped, that child took out a colour word. Children were reminded of the sentence format to use “I see a ........ bear looking at me”. The children then said the correct sentence, depending on the colour selected e.g. “I see a red bear....” “I see a blue bear..... “etc.
(2) This was then extended to include choice of colour and animal. The colour words were placed in the bag as above. The animal flashcards were placed face down on the carpet. The game was played as above but this time, the children had to take a word out of the hat and then turn over an animal card. They were then asked to say the correct sentence. “I see a red dog”; “I see a yellow sheep” etc. This promoted discussion about whether we could have a yellow sheep, green horse etc., helping with simple comprehension of familiar words. The more able children saw the humour in this activity and later chose to continue to make up their own animals.
As the plenary, we devised our own class book based on the text. The children helped to create the sentences following the repetitive format of the text which were later written up for the book. The book was then made available for the children to access freely in the book corner. If this had been done later in the year, the children could have written the captions for the book themselves.
Dice game:
Materials :
- Two dice with slide in pockets/faces
- Key vocabulary, pictures or objects to go with the text – in this case colour words and animal pictures/flashcards.
How to play:
Similar to the ‘Pass the bag’ game, but have one dice with the colour words on and the other with the animal name. The children had to roll one dice to get the colour and the other to get the animal for our sentence.
“I see a purple fish looking at me.”
This helped to reinforce the correct order in which the words come within the sentence and made the children use both information words. “I see a fish purple looking at me.” or “I see a purple fish looking at me.” Which sounds right? Why?
Other game ideas:
· The cards made can also be used for other games such as – pairs – matching animal pictures; words; correct animal to the correct colour from the book etc.
· Kim’s game (the tray game) Place pictures or words from the story on a tray. Cover and take one away. Which one is missing? Games like this help to reinforce vocabulary and memory skills. This can be extended to children having to (1) tell their partner which one is missing or (2) writing on a white board.
· Guess who – “Who am I?” Base clues on the animals as they appear in the text.
· Story sequencer (available from TTS) – matching pictures; sequencing events; sequencing/re-telling the story depending on the messages pre-recorded by the teacher in each compartment.
This work led to us being able to focus on the characters and descriptive language in the story of ‘The Gruffalo.
- Identification and use of descriptive words for the characters in the story; drawing up a class word bank of descriptive words after reading and discussing the text.
- ‘Pass the bag’ game using flashcards of the characters. Children were asked to (1) Match the character to the description read by the teacher and (2) pull a character picture out of the bag and describe the character using our descriptions e.g. “I am a mouse. I am small. I eat Gruffalo crumble.” This was followed up with a “Guess Who? “game during a mini-plenary session.
- Use of a dice containing pictures of each of the Gruffalo characteristics as displayed in the text. The children rolled the dice and were asked to describe the Gruffalo using the characteristics displayed e.g. “He has purple prickles all over his back.”; “He has turned out toes” etc. This provided the children with the opportunity to use the descriptive language from the text.
- Use of a story sequencer. There were pre-recorded characteristics of the Gruffalo in each compartment. The children had to listen to the description and match with the correct picture. This was extended to the children recording the characteristics/descriptions for their friends to match the pictures with.
- Use of talking tins to record their own descriptions of the Gruffalo - “My Gruffalo is......” “My Gruffalo has......” using modelled sentence. This led to some writing of simple captions at different level as with the ‘Brown Bear. Brown Bear’ activity.
Evaluation of impact on progress / writing :
Some children started in Reception with very little speech, preferring not to speak in front of the whole class or in small groups. This showed itself as (1) very low CLL results and/or (2) very low writing results due to children not giving meaning to their marks. The low CLL obviously results impact across all 7 areas of the EYFS resulting in children not demonstrating the expected on entry levels. Increased confidence has enabled some children to make significant progress in those areas requiring children to speak, demonstrating understanding of and using appropriate vocabulary within their day to day activities and child-initiated learning, for example speaking within familiar contexts and using vocabulary appropriately within their play. This in turn should enable them to move closer towards achieving the expected level in more areas in the EYFS Profile by at the end of their Reception year. Children have also become much more confident to make marks and share what their marks mean.
Opportunities have been provided for children to re-enact familiar stories and rhymes using puppets and sequencing pictures. Leaving teaching resources out for children to explore on their own has had a positive impact, with them choosing to use the resources, copy the words, and say the words from books used.
The teachers have commented on the fact that the children have started to include more information in their speech to make meaning clear to others. Some children are reflecting this in writing simple captions, showing a developing awareness of simple sentence structures.
Next steps:
· To continue to develop confidence in speaking in small groups and in front of the whole class.
· To continue to work on developing simple sentence structures orally before moving on to simple written formats. We can’t write it if we can’t say it!
(Communication & Language – Speaking 40-60 months 12. Links statements and sticks to a main theme or intention; 13. Uses talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events) This will lead to children working on the Early Learning Goals (ELG 1. Children express themselves effectively, showing awareness of listeners’ needs; 2. They use past, present and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future)
· Children to be encouraged to use longer utterances becoming more familiar with past and present forms. (Communication & Language – Speaking 30-50 months 5. Uses a range of tenses (e.g. play, playing, will play, played).
· Shared/guided reading session time to be used to reinforce oral language work on vocabulary and simple grammatical structures. (Communication & Language – Understanding 40-60 months 6. Understands humour, e.g. nonsense rhymes, jokes; 7. Able to follow a story without pictures or props; 8. Listens and responds to ideas expressed by others in conversation or discussion)
· Introduce a small language group for those children needing greater support with speaking and listening before being able to put pen to paper.
Appendix :
- Weekly plan for ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You see?”
- Story resources – flashcards, pictures, and worksheet.
- Examples of children’s work – (1) to go with the text and (2) other examples taken from after in the term.