The skills of speaking and listening are crucial to children’s language acquisition and social development. They are strong building blocks for learning and thinking. Effective communication is a key skill that children will need for the rest of their lives: it is important, therefore, that teachers and parents encourage constructive speaking and listening outside of school. Children should be provided with a range of contexts and opportunities to further develop their speaking and listening skills, including developing the ability to generate the pros and cons of a topic in the format of a debate and being able to review and share experiences, explaining why their experience was important to them.

Within each unit for writing, the children have 'experience lessons' which allow them to participate in drama. We also have opportunities across our wider curriculum for children to work together to perform, debate and share experiences.