Intent

Our intent is for children to become capable communicators who connect with others through language and play.

Implementation:

We provide children with opportunities to experience a communication friendly environment, and to develop their skills in speaking and listening in a range of situations. We facilitate this through both adult led and child-initiated play. We also promote these skills through programmes tailored to their level of need. We work in consultation with Speech and Language Therapists to deliver activities for both groups and individual children. We encourage communication and language skills daily, through both adult directed and child-initiated play. We develop our children’s language skills further through use of carefully planned, curriculum informed, tiered vocabulary.

We share and use our oracy rules to promote speaking and listening skills. Children are given opportunities to speak in front of an audience. Our staff are all trained in Makaton, and use this throughout the day, in order to support children’s communication at all stages. This includes pre-verbal.

Impact

We monitor the progress of our children through regular, ongoing observations and assessments. We use our online Learning journey, Tapestry, to record this. We use the Statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and Development Matters to plan our progressive curriculum, across our EYFS, in order ensure that our children are making good progress. We also moderate both within school and externally as a LAT to ensure that our judgements are timely, quality assured and accurate. Children are also taught to explain their learning through use of graphic organisers.