Guidance and format for observing spoken language
Case study: Three by the Sea
Abi planned a teaching sequence for her six to seven year olds, based on Mini Grey’s Three by the Sea to help develop the children’s language choices and narrative writing. The main written outcome of the three week teaching sequence was a first person narrative written from the point of view of Dog, Cat or Mouse. The role play area had been transformed into a beach hut and the children invited to make decorations for it based on their reading and any experience they had of the sea side.
Throughout the teaching sequence, the children had numerous opportunities to talk and write. Abi regularly modelled application of the skills she was teaching, for example, after reading the story several times, she told and re-told the narrative to help the children get a sense of narrative structure and to model the use of appropriate language choices. The children engaged in discussion in order to unpick story events, for example, to consider what The Winds of Change might mean. When the children were familiar with the events of the narrative, they began to explore the main characters. In one oral activity, the children used a zone of relevance target board (see Figure W4.2.1 below) to select adjectives to describe the character of The Stranger. Words that are most appropriate are placed in the centre of and less relevant vocabulary is moved away from the zone’s target.
Abi prepared a suitcase with a range of adjectives on them. This was passed around small mixed ability groups of children. Each child retrieved a word and considered: Does this word describe The Stranger? They were then required to justify their opinion using the text and their knowledge of the character. In order to support the children’s use of Standard English and sentence construction, prompts were used to scaffold oral responses. These included, ‘The Stranger is….’. The children offered: ‘The Stranger is mysterious because he just comes from nowhere.’ ‘The Stranger is sly because he talks about the animals behind their backs.’ Following this talk, Abi demonstrated how to select adjectives for writing and the children wrote sentences about The Stranger to put on a ‘Wanted’ advertisement for him as he had disappeared so quickly and mysteriously.
During the three-week sequence, the class spent some time in role play and freeze framing events in the story to get the events clear and establish some sense of the characters of Dog, Cat and Mouse. Using the role play area, they wrote lists of jobs to be done in the beach hut and what they might need to pack if they were going to run away like Mouse. They wrote recipes for food using cheese and sardines and tended their own pots of herbs (bought by Abi).
In capturing ideas for their own narrative writing, the children chose which character they wanted to be and drew pictures of what they were doing the day before the story began. Abi modelled hot-seating the Mouse to practise and consolidate use of adjectives and the class discussed what they thought about the Mouse trying to run away. They talked about Dog and Cat and what they thought about their characters. In small group work, language about characterisation that had come up during class discussion was added to the children's pictures. After Abi demonstrated the use of first person narrative, the children used their annotated pictures to plot their stories and as they began to write, they drafted their ideas through oral rehearsal. Throughout the writing they edited and redrafted with others in small group work. To finish off the sequence, the children recorded their opinions of the book and these were uploaded as a podcast available in the library alongside a display about Mini Grey’s books.
Figure W4.2.1 Zone of relevance – adjectives
Case study: The First Slodge using the planning and teaching sequence
Planning
Rachel, who teaches five and six year olds, planned to use The First Slodge by Jeanne Willis and Jenni Desmond as the stimulus for a three-week teaching sequence using contemporary fiction. She identified the following objectives drawn from the national curriculum for English in England:
Word reading and spelling would be taught during explicit phonics sessions as the teaching sequence was early in the year.
Reading comprehension
Develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and understanding by:
- listening to and discussing stories at a level beyond that at which they can read independently
- discussing word meanings
- discussing the significance of the title and events
- making inferences on the basis of what is being said and done
- predicting what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far
- participating in discussion about what is read to them.
Handwriting would be taught during explicit handwriting sessions.
Writing composition
Write sentences by:
- saying out loud what they are going to write about
- composing a sentence orally before writing it
- sequencing sentences to form short narratives
- re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense.
Grammar and punctuation:
- understand what a sentence is: verb, noun or subject and punctuate
- leave spaces between words
- begin to punctuate sentences using a capital letter and a full stop
- use a capital letter for names of people, places, the days of the week, and the personal pronoun ‘I’.
Spoken language:
- articulate and justify answers and opinions
- give well-structured descriptions and narratives
- use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas
- speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English
- participate in discussions, role play. (Links to phonics, spelling and handwriting would be modelled as part of the writing process as well as through discrete teaching.)
Across the sequence of lessons, she planned the following opportunities for children to respond to the text in writing (pupil outcomes):
- thought bubbles (writing in role)
- predictions
- notes from one character to another (writing in role)
- character description: creating a character – design, draw, describe
- retelling a familiar tale (with a new character): plan through mapping (drawing); story structure (setting, character, problem, beginning and ending); sequencing sentences in order to tell a new story.
During the first phase of this teaching sequence, there is a greater focus on spoken language so this case study provides more detail of this phase with some examples of the teacher’s questioning.
Phase One: Reading and investigation; becoming familiar with the text type
During the first week of the sequence, Rachel focused on reading comprehension (reading for meaning) as well as spoken language. Initially, the children looked at the title double page spread and the front matter which shows the Slodge emerging from the green slime. Rachel read the opening sentences of the first double page spread:
Once upon a slime there was a Slodge.
The first Slodge in the Universe.
In order to encourage speculating and hypothesising, she asked the children, ‘What is a Slodge?’ and as they gave answers:
a green monster
a strange creature
she encouraged them to articulate their ideas in full sentences:
A Slodge is a green monster.
The Slodge is a strange creature.
She then read the next double page spread from: ‘She saw the first sunrise’ to '’ My star; my moon’. And to allow for imaginative ideas she asked the children to make up more sentences about the Slodge, ‘What is she like? Where does she live? How do you know?’
Some of the children suggested:
The Slodge lives by a lake.
The Slodge likes the moon.
She is lonely.
Rachel selected sentences offered by the children which had easily identifiable nouns and verbs and wrote them on flipchart paper. First of all she chose sentences that began ‘The Slodge is…’ so that the class could talk about nouns before going on to talk about pronouns. She was careful not to talk about verbs as ‘doing’ or ‘action’ words because the verb the children had used most often was a form of the verb ‘to be’, which involves no action at all.She reminded the children that the verb ‘is’ tells you something about the person, using some of the children as examples: ‘Minna is a girl.’; ‘Scott is a boy.’ They identified the names as nouns and ‘is’ as the verb.
Returning to the sentences they had composed about the Slodge, Rachel asked the class to talk in their pairs and decide on the nouns and verbs:
A Slodge is a green blob.
The Slodge is a lonely creature.
The Slodge lives by a lake.
The Slodge likes the moon.
They were quickly able to identify ‘Slodge’ as a noun and ‘is’, ‘lives’ and ‘likes’ as verbs. Then Rachel asked, ‘Can you see any more things – nouns – in the sentences?’ and together the class found ‘blob’, ‘creature’, ‘lake’ and ‘moon’. While they had been discussing these, the teaching assistant, Nita, had cut up the sentences noted on the flipchart paper into separate words plus the full stop. In small groups, the children were asked to reassemble the sentences, making sure they used every piece of the jigsaw and when they were sure they had used them all, to make ‘human sentences’ where each child held up their word (or full stop) in the right order. To check that they made grammatical sense and were accurately demarcated, Rachel asked the class to read each group’s sentence aloud in turn.
Rachel shared the rest of the book with the class and in the following days they reread the text several times and discussed it, focusing on reading for inference about character and consolidating their knowledge of sentence structure. Rachel wanted the children to be able to give reasons for their answers and opinions, and articulate them in sentences so on the second reading, she stopped at the end of the third double page spread where the Slodge smelled the first flower and picked the first fruit and is shown singing and skipping. Rachel asked the children, ‘What does this spread tell us about the character? What do we know about the Slodge?’ She listed the children’s ideas, making sure that they gave reasons for their opinions. The following page says ‘As she slept, she dreamed’ to encourage the children to hypothesise, Rachel asked them what the Slodge might have dreamed about. Using the ‘character chair’ (a chair in the reading corner in which the person sitting in the chair becomes the character), Rachel modelled thinking aloud as the Slodge and volunteers took turns to voice the Slodge’s thoughts. In group work the children orally rehearsed sentences about what the Slodge’s dreams might have been and wrote them. Rachel provided them with the opening to their sentence, ‘I dreamed...’ to help them to articulate in full and grammatically correct sentences. Children's writing was shared with the whole class, checking that they were grammatically correct.
In the following session, they recapped the story and read on to where somebody had taken a second bite of the fruit. Pausing briefly, Rachel asked the children, ‘Who might have taken that second bite? Why do you think that?’ and after some suggestions they read on to where the Slodge meets another Slodge and the words say ‘It was a terrible shock.’ Rachel asked the children, ‘What does “a terrible shock” mean and why is it a terrible shock?’ The children realised that the Slodge had thought she was all alone and to meet another Slodge would have been a surprise. Rachel presented the children with four adjectives and asked, ‘How would you feel – angry, surprised, scared, happy…?’ The children worked with a partner to choose the most appropriate one and explain why. In role as the Slodge, Rachel demonstrated wondering to herself ‘Who is this? Did she eat MY fruit?’ and the children then worked in pairs in role as the two Slodges, each wondering aloud about the other Slodge. Rachel took children's ideas and modelled writing thought bubbles, in first person, present tense, one by the first Slodge, and another by the second and the children wrote their own thought bubbles.
In the following session, Rachel re-read the story to the page where the Slodges were fighting, inviting the children to speculate and infer by asking, ‘Why are they fighting?’ After some discussion, she read on to the end of the following double page spread where the fruit fell into the sea and the First Slodge jumped in after it. Rachel asked the children to predict what might happen next, using a sentence prompt ‘I think that…’ to support their sentence construction and to model possibilities and the children articulated, drew and wrote what they thought would happen next. They continued reading to where the Slodges escape from the Snawk, share the fruit and become friends. By this time it is clear that the second Slodge is a ‘he’ and to check their understanding, Rachel asked the children what they noticed about the part ‘“That’s my Slodge!” he said.’ She read on to where the Slodges are watching the sunset together and asked the children how the Slodges felt, offering some words on a continuum: angry, hot, worried, relaxed, contented, happy. As she pointed to them, the children had to say whether she was ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ according to how accurately they thought the words described the way the Slodges were feeling. Rachel made thought bubbles and attached them to the picture of the two Slodges. Again, the children were invited to sit in the character chair and describe the Slodges’ thoughts. Rachel took the children's ideas and modelled composing thought bubble sentences in role as the Slodges. She then wondered aloud, ‘How will they let each other know what they’re thinking? I think they’ll write each other a note.’ Asking for suggestions about what the Slodge might say to her friend, Rachel modelled writing a note from the first Slodge to the second, and in groups the children wrote their own notes on special paper, choosing which Slodge they were going to write to. While undertaking shared writing and working with small groups to compose sentences, Rachel encouraged children to orally rehearse and hold sentences in their minds before writing. Reading the next double page spread, Rachel paused on:
Once upon a time there were two Slodges.
But not for long…
asking the children to predict what was about to happen. They then read to the end and discussed what the picture suggested about how the Slodges’ world had changed. The children were encouraged to articulate their suggestions in full sentences and supported to do so where necessary.
Figure W4.3.1 The two Slodges
At the end of this phase of the sequence, Rachel invited the children to identify what they had learned, offering sentences that began with ‘I …’:
- I understand what a sentence is.
- I can understand a character’s feelings.
- I can write in sentences to describe a character.
- I can predict what might happen.
- I can give reasons for my ideas.
Reviewing her own plans, Rachel was able to note that the children had been exposed to the planned reading comprehension objectives and most of the spoken language objectives.
Phase Two of the teaching sequence: Capturing ideas, explicit teaching and modelling and discussion and experimentation
Rachel began the next phase of the teaching sequence by re-telling the whole story, inviting the children to join in. She modelled mapping the story, using story language: character, setting, problem and ending. After they had revisited the story and looked at the book again, she asked the children to identify their favourite parts of the story, and give reasons. The children wrote and illustrated sentences describing their favourite part of the story.
To teach about character, Rachel planned explicitly to teach about how adjectives enhance description, modelling drawing a Snawk and demonstrating a sentence:
The Snawk has sharp teeth.
She then labelled it with more adjectives which the children suggested: pointy teeth, big mouth, webbed feet. Together they gathered a list of possible adjectives and Rachel took the opportunity to revisit the children’s understanding of a noun. The children drew and described their own character, labelling it with adjectives. They then wrote sentences to describe their character and Rachel emphasised the importance of adjectives and grammatically correct sentences. During the rest of the week’s sessions, Rachel introduced the writing task: to write a story about a character: The First… Rachel chose a new character The Flig. Modelling the process throughout, Rachel used story language so that the children would understand all the ingredients of a story: characters, setting, beginning, problem, ending. She modelled telling a story about her character The Flig, mapping the story as she told it: ‘Once upon a slime…’. As she told the story, she followed the map of the original Slodge story. In groups the children drew and re-told the story.
Figure W4.3.2 The Snawk
At the end of this phase, the children were able to confirm:
- I can talk about my favourite part of a story.
- I can use adjectives to describe.
- I can describe a character.
Rachel noted that the class had covered the rest of the spoken language objectives, the grammar and punctuation objectives and some of the writing objectives.
Phase Three: Shared and supported writing, making controlled writing choices in independent writing
In this final week of the sequence, Rachel wanted to ensure that the children could write sentences by:
- composing a sentence orally before writing it
- sequencing sentences to form short narratives
- re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense
- discussing what they have written with the teacher or other pupils.
Over the week’s sessions, she used shared, modelled and small group work to write a narrative based on The First Slodge, calling it The First ****. The narrative would be in the third person, past tense. She modelled how to transfer orally rehearsed sentences into writing, making key teaching points such as the application of phonic skills and knowledge. At regular intervals, she encouraged the children to reread small sections of their text (which she had previously identified) to check it made sense, supporting them in doing this. Throughout the week, she reinforced grammar teaching by taking sentences written by the children and sharing them or by playing human sentences to support the children in recognising elements of a sentence, for example the importance of determiners or consistent tenses. Children were asked to work in pairs to read their finished draft to a partner or teacher/ teaching assistant. In modelling, Rachel offered the children a possible story structure through displaying the map based on the original book. After the children had written their own stories, they were able to self-assess and confirm:
- I can write a story.
- I can read my writing to make sure it makes sense.
- I understand what a sentence is and punctuate it correctly.
Rachel was satisfied that the children had been exposed to all the objectives identified in her planning and that she had evidence for noting the range of the children’s achievements in spoken language through their predictions, speculations and opinions supported by reasons; through role play; writing in role; descriptions and short stories. She also had evidence of their ability to speak clearly in Standard English. Reading comprehension was evidenced through their responses to the text; their thought bubbles and the notes from Slodge to Slodge. For writing and grammar she had the children's descriptions of their characters and their narrative based on the structure and events of the original.
Children’s books
Jeanne Willis (illustrated J. Desmond) (2015) The First Slodge. Little Tiger Press. ISBN 9781848690394.
Planning for spoken language – transcript
In this interview transcript, Rachael describes how she plans an English teaching sequence for a class of five to six year olds.
How do you go about deciding on the focus for a teaching sequence?
I start with my long term plan, a text, and what I know the children need now. I know what I need to teach over the course of the year and I’ve broken this down into terms/ half terms as a medium term plan. This enables me to see how to balance fiction/ non-fiction and a range of texts across each term.
I’ve always read the text and thought to myself, that would be brilliant for... and so I then WANT to read it to the children. Because I love it, I know the children will and I'm really keen to use it. As I read the book, I annotate it with my thoughts for teaching and possible written outcomes – points when I think it would be good for the children to write in role as a character, or write the next chapter, or debate a key issue. When I come to do my planning, these ideas provide the meaningful contexts for writing. I map out my teaching so I know which teaching sequence will come first and which will come last so that I’ve planned time to read the book aloud and discuss/ explore it before we write.
Where do you start the planning?
If I know I want the children to write a narrative at the end of two or three weeks, I start with my expectations. I start by saying: What do I want to see in their writing? I jot down the elements I would expect to see in the children's writing. I also know myself: What are the children good at? What are the sticking points? When I’ve got the list, and the next steps/ sticking points, I know what I’ve got to teach. I also have the expectations of the national curriculum and so I align with this. In other words, I've got my success criteria (what I want to see in their work), and I know what the children aren’t yet good at. This is what I need to teach. I can’t do everything so I need to focus. The rest of my planning is shaped by this.
I know I’ve got three weeks, that’s 15 lessons. I start by thinking: how many lessons to write, edit and publish? If that’s four, then I’ve got eleven lessons. So what I’m doing is working backwards from the number of days I know it will take to complete the writing phase.
Then I’m left with the journey towards the writing outcome and I need to include grammar and punctuation and reading comprehension and talk. This is where I can be creative but within the confines of what I need the children to learn. If the children’s endings are weak, we need to spend one or two lessons on this. If it’s speech punctuation, we need to plan a drama lesson and grammar lesson where this is explicitly taught. That’s how I go about the planning process.
Could you talk me through the planning for The First Slodge sequence?
I loved the book and saw that children would love it, that it had layers of meaning which could be explored and that it offered lots of great contexts for reading response and writing. It was well-written and engaging. I could also see that it could be a good model for writing so that was it – I had to use it!
It fitted with narrative and contemporary narrative in terms of the school's long term plan. I started with the English National Curriculum requirements for Y1 (five to six year olds): what would I want the children to learn/ write? What should they be able to do in Y1? This includes different strands: reading, grammar and punctuation, writing and my planning went from there. I read the book several times and annotated it with ideas for questions, teaching, talk, reading, writing. I try to plan for regular opportunities for writing to build stamina, confidence and fluency. In lots of instances this is linked to reading comprehension so although there's a more sustained written outcome, there’s also teaching of writing and writing composition throughout the sequence.
Starting with the outcome: a contemporary narrative based on The First Slodge – a new character, I roughly jotted what I would want the children to demonstrate and the national curriculum links. I then roughly allocated days for planning and writing this narrative [phase three]. This enabled me to see how many other days I had for phases one and two of the teaching sequence. By identifying what I wanted to see in the children's writing, I was able to see what I would need to explicitly teach and how long I might need to realistically do this. This worked in terms of reading comprehension, grammar and punctuation and writing. I roughly allocated the number of sessions.
Now I was able to return to my annotations and prioritise the teaching ideas that would enable me to meet the learning. I can't do everything and even though I know they would be lovely lessons, I have to focus in on the key skills that I want the children to learn. I’m mindful when planning that I can’t teach all of the expectations of the national curriculum so I try to identify only those that I’m explicitly teaching.
I map my teaching sequence through each day. I ask myself, What am I teaching the children to do? What do I want the children to learn? and I identify the learning objective. I strip it back so that it is clear and transferable. When I have the intended learning, I’m much clearer about the activities and questions that might lead my teaching – I have to be brutal. Great activities fall by the wayside because they are just 'fun' and not supporting the learning. I also ask myself, what will the child demonstrate to show they have met that learning? These are the success criteria or steps to success.
While I’m mapping each day’s teaching, I think about organisational aspects: how to use TA support and how to organise my time. For example, because the class have mixed abilities, I often organise shared and modelled writing with sections of the class so that I can pitch it appropriately. I also use small group work, and although I can't plan this too much, I’m aware of times when I might want to follow up aspects or return to key elements with small groups and individuals. This includes providing feedback.
While I’m planning an English teaching sequence like this, I'm also thinking about how the children might be given other opportunities to apply these skills in other subject areas, for example, after writing thought bubbles in role as characters in The First Slodge, the children could do this in an RE lesson when looking at a parable or religious story, or they might write thought bubbles as a historical character. They might write a simple description of a historical character. It is really important that the children are given opportunities to apply written skills as much as possible and so I’m always mindful of this when doing my long, medium and short term planning.
Record sheet for spoken language observations
Scale of Progression in Spoken Language
Case study: Developing vocabulary
Ben, who has a passion for language, aimed to expand the vocabulary of his class of eight and nine year olds but wanted to find an approach which meant that they were doing the work of digging into language and uncovering some gems. He was not keen to adopt an approach which assumed that the children’s language was in some way deficient and specifically wanted to involve families in the work. He introduced the class to the idea of language investigations; the first of these would last at least a couple of weeks – and longer if necessary. The class had 20 minutes dedicated time each morning to bring their ideas to school and build vocabulary banks. The teacher began by establishing with the class what a language investigation involved, explaining that it was rather like forensic detective work and depended on gathering evidence. This evidence would be in the form of sentences which used the chosen vocabulary so that it was clear what the words actually meant. He hoped, too, to show that some words had different meanings according to different contexts.
He created a special section of the class library which had several copies of the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins and the Oxford Children’s Thesaurus. He began by asking the class to spend fifteen minutes at home finding as many different words they could for ‘investigate’, ‘investigated’ or ‘investigation’. They could ask their families for help but they must write a sentence for each word. The next morning, the class brought in a range of words in sentences including:
I am going to research some words.
This research shows the causes of heart disease.
The SOCOs [scene of crime officers] have scrutinised the place where the body was found.
The survey showed that there were lots of people in favour of the new bus service.
This is an inquiry into who is guilty.
He checked on the alibis they had given.
They discussed the fact that a word can be both a verb and a noun as in the two examples of ‘research’.
In pairs or threes the class then set about finding these words in the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins and found out all kinds of information about how the English language draws on other languages, sharing their findings with the class. This was just the beginning of a year-long investigation into language. The habit spread across the curriculum, for example, to science lessons where the class enjoyed developing their technical scientific vocabulary and art where they gathered terms to describe different painting and drawing techniques. After reading The Word Collector the class set out to choose the kinds of words they wanted to collect. Some chose words associated with their interests, like sporting terms or words associated with particular animals. A group of bilingual children investigated words in English that had come into the language from the Indian sub-continent; others focused on science terminology. By the end of the year the class had collected thousands of words and ended the summer term with a ‘wordfest’ where they shared some of their findings with younger classes.
Extract from Viewpoints: Vocabulary (2019) UKLA. https://ukla.org/ukla_resources/ukla-viewpoints-vocabulary/.
For other useful classroom examples, see also:
Lane, H. and Allen, S. (2010) The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modelling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth. .
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/vocabulary-rich-classroom-modeling-sophisticated-word-use-promote-word-consciousness-and.
References
Ayto, John (2013) Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press.
Oxford Dictionaries (2015) Oxford Children’s Thesaurus. Oxford University Press.
Wimmer, Sonja (2012) The Word Collector (trans. Jon Brokenbrow). Cuento de Luz.