Richmond School
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LANGUAGE FOR LEARNING POLICY AND GUIDANCE MATERIAL
INTRODUCTION
This introduction is taken from the QCA booklet “Language for Learning in Key Stage 3”
The links between language and learning in the school curriculum are well established. All lessons include and largely depend on oral and written communication. The teacher explains, questions, describes, organises and evaluates in the classroom and does this mostly through talk, sometimes through writing. Students often answer, discuss and work out ideas through talk. They commonly write in order to record, summarise, note, show evidence of understanding and develop analyses and arguments. Successful learners read to gain access to and evaluate information and ideas from a range of texts and sources.
As students develop their subject knowledge and understanding, they need increasingly sophisticated and exact ways of saying what they mean and of expressing more subtle distinctions and more complex ideas. This requires a more developed vocabulary, a range of grammatical constructions and skill in conveying shades of meaning or stages of argument. Beyond school, students’ skills in language contribute to their progress both in education and employment, and to their opportunities to develop diverse interests and abilities.
THE STATUTORY REQUIREMENT FOR USE OF LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
In the revised National Curriculum, the statutory requirement for teaching the use of language is more explicit about how subject teachers should contribute to students’ ability to use language in different contexts. The underlying messages are:
• enhancing students’ language enhances their subject learning;
• subjects make a specific contribution to developing students’ language through the use of subject-specific vocabulary and patterns of language;
• all teaching contributes to students’ development of language since speaking, listening, writing and reading are, to varying degrees, integral to all lessons.
The requirement included in the National Curriculum for all subjects reads as follows:
a) Students should be taught in all subjects to express themselves correctly and appropriately and to read accurately and with understanding. Since standard English, spoken and written, is the predominant language in which knowledge and skills are taught and learned, students should be taught to recognise and use standard English.
b) Writing - In writing, students should be taught to use correct spelling and punctuation and follow grammatical conventions. They should also be taught to organise their writing in logical and coherent forms.
c) Speaking - In speaking, students should be taught to use language precisely and cogently.
d) Listening - Students should be taught to listen to others, and to respond and build on their ideas and views constructively.
e) Reading - In reading, students should be taught strategies to help them read with understanding, to locate and use information, to follow a process or argument and summarise, and to synthesise and adapt what they learn from their reading.
• Students should be taught the technical and specialist vocabulary of subjects and how to use and spell these words. They should also be taught to use the patterns of language vital to understanding and expression in different subjects. These include the construction of sentences, paragraphs and texts that are often used in a subject [for example, language to express causality, chronology, logic, exploration, hypothesis, comparison, and how to ask questions and develop arguments]
The work of teachers in primary schools, implementing the National Literacy Strategy Framework for teaching and the Literacy Hour, is raising the standards of students’ reading and writing. This means that most students will have the skills in language which enable them to tackle the breadth of the Key Stage 3 curriculum with confidence.
In order to maintain and develop these skills, teachers need to:
• recognise how language is integral to their subject;
• reinforce what students can already do;
• build on these skills so that students are able to use them independently and appropriately.
AIM AND PURPOSE OF THIS POLICY
It is the aim of Richmond School to improve students' learning through the effective use of language across the curriculum. It is the aim of this document to provide teachers with the methods of fulfilling this aim.
PURPOSES OF THIS POLICY
| The Purposes of this policy are: | Sections of the policy where information, ideas, and guidance can be found relating to each purpose: |
• to raise awareness in all subjects of the importance of language to successful learning; |
Introduction and Statutory requirements. (P1) |
| • to commit all subjects to a shared responsibility for language development; | Departmental Responsibilities (p7) |
| • to reinforce the objectives of the National curriculum with regard to the use of Standard English in students’ formal oral and written work; | Introduction and Statutory requirements (p1) |
• to establish a coherent and shared approach to students’ language development through the formation of a Language for Learning Group which will encourage, monitor and evaluate the progress of Language for Learning across the curriculum; |
Language for Learning Group (p5) |
| • to inform staff of the National Literacy Strategy and the language skills which students at the end of Key Stage 2 should have acquired; | Selections from NLS at KS2. (Appendix G p51) |
| • to raise awareness of the differential achievement of boys and girls when learning through language, and to encourage departments to find ways of raising the achievement of boys; | Autumn package data |
• to take account of the school’s existing policies on assessment and spelling, so that there is a coherent approach to these aspects of Language for Learning; |
Policies already in operation |
• to provide guidance to subject staff about the expectations they should have of their students’ language development at each key stage; |
QCA document: expectations and objectives (Appendix E p20) |
• to provide staff with techniques and exercises which will enable students to improve their learning through more accurate use of language; |
Teaching techniques (Appendix A p12) |
| • to alert departments and individual teachers to the opportunities afforded in their subjects and lessons for language development; | QCA Classroom Examples |
| • to provide departments with ways of measuring the accessibility of their textual resources to students; | Text readability measures (Appendix B p15) |
| • to support departments in producing schemes of work which acknowledge the need for language progression at each key stage; | QCA Classroom Examples (Appendix F p25) |
| • to give guidance to staff about ground rules to use when students learn through oral work; | Ground rules for oral work. |
| • to give prominence to the desirability of independent reading by students in all curriculum areas; | The Library’s role. (p10) |
AUTHORSHIP
This policy has been produced by a working group of staff and a governor, in consultation with students, teachers, governors and parents.