What Ofsted had to say about English at Montpelier...

Promoting pupils' love and enjoyment of reading is at the heart of the school's curriculum. Younger pupils learn their phonics quickly. There is a good range of books for them to choose from that match their abilities and interests. Teachers are well trained to use the school's phonics programme. This is demanding and well set out. Pupils start learning their phonics from the moment they enter school. Leaders ensure that pupils do not fall behind in their reading. As a result, pupils become confident and fluent readers.

Oracy at Montpelier

Our Aim

Our aim is for Montpelier to be a language rich environment, where pupils and staff use the spoken language to communicate and express themselves successfully.

Whole School Expectations

There is a whole school expectation that all members of the school community will apply good oracy principles when communicating and interacting.

Dojos

We reward good oracy, across the school, with oracy dojos. Examples of good oracy could include: speaking in full sentences, using kind words, saying good morning, disagreeing with an opposing view and justifying your reasons.

Class Talking Tips

All twenty one classes at Montpelier are in the process of creating a set of ‘Talking Tips’. These are a set of guidelines that pupils and staff follow to help them improve their oracy skills.

Opportunities for Talk

When planning, staff at Montpelier consider and create opportunities to talk. Not only are we learning to talk, we are learning through talk. We appreciate that learning, across the curriculum, can be enhanced when quality, structured talk is encouraged.

Real Life Experiences

As well as providing opportunities to talk within lessons, we work hard to provide ‘real life’ opportunities for pupils to develop their oracy skills too. Examples of this include: Foundation children visiting the local shop to spend 10p. Pupils recording our telephone answer phone messages. Pupils taking orders and serving teas and coffees during our parent helper afternoon tea.

Vocabulary

We use various strategies to develop our vocabulary at Montpelier. We pre-teach topic specific vocabulary, we collect and investigate words in SPaG, we clarify the meaning of words when we read, and we read quality texts and discuss the impact of words and phrases. We have high expectations of vocabulary when children are talking and writing.