There are three clearly progressive core strands of teaching and learning over the four years of KS2:

• Oracy (Speaking and Listening) (O)
• Literacy (Reading and Writing) (L)
• Intercultural Understanding (IU)

Oracy: Listening and responding

Children should be taught how to listen carefully and discriminate sounds, identify meaning and develop auditory awareness. Teachers should use the following activities:

• respond on hearing a certain word(s), structures or phrases, e.g. put up hands, hold up an object, picture or word card, stand up;
• listen and respond to songs, poems or stories, and listen for certain details, information, repeated words or rhyming words;
• play games that require concentration on listening, such as 'Simon says', 'bingo' or 'true or false';
• respond to what they hear by performing an action or answering a question;
• pick out specific details from longer passages of familiar language, e.g. name, place, cost;
• listen to audio, videotape or CD-ROM and note down information;
• listen to and attempt to retain a sequence of numbers, letters or words which children then repeat, e.g. Je vais à Paris, elle va à Lille, il va à Nantes.

Oracy: Speaking

The focus should be on correct pronunciation and intonation.

Activities might include:

• reinforcement activities using visual aids (see ‘Teaching and Learning Styles’)

• joining in with songs, poems and rhymes and then learning them by heart
• integrating previously learnt language with newly learnt language;
• manipulating language, e.g. using vocabulary and structures for a range of purposes and in a range of different contexts, changing the person of verbs, using plurals, forming negatives and questions;

• taking part in pair and group work, e.g. finding out and exchanging
• information, devising sketches and role plays;
• recording onto video- or audiotape, e.g. poems, songs, information about school, town, sketches, presentations;
• preparing for a presentation/assembly.

Literacy: Reading and responding

Techniques used and developed during children's work in literacy should be used. Activities should include:

• replacing visual cues gradually with text cues;

• reading new words by sounding out and blending their separate parts;
• sounding out syllables in words to help memory;

• grouping similar sounds together;

• playing word games, e.g. word and picture dominoes, matching pairs;  sorting and dictionary work;
• shared reading of  short fiction and non-fiction texts including different text types e.g. newspaper reports

Literacy: Writing

Activities might include:

• finger writing in the air;
• writing new words by combining the spelling patterns of their
• sounds;
• communicating real messages by writing and sending e-mails;
• writing down personal information as it is learnt to create a pen
• portrait;

• making labels and posters;
• acrostic poetry, shape poetry;

• creating and extending sentences using familiar language;
• using a familiar structure as a framework for creative writing;

• preparing text for a wall display or presentation.