Communication Skills

“A word after a word after a word is power.” 

Margaret Atwood, author  

At Wolsingham School, we seek to help our students to fulfil their true potential. We understand the power of words, both in their spoken and written form, which is why we explicitly teach communication skills right across the curriculum: we are all teachers of communication, regardless of our discipline. To provide students with an education in reading, writing and speaking, is to give them a voice. Nothing has greater transformative potential and nothing opens more doors for young people than the ability to write or articulate their thoughts and ideas.

“With well over a million words stuffed into the English language, we cannot know them all, but with a greater awareness of words – their rich and complex meanings, uses and even abuses – we can help our students develop something like the word-hoard of 50, 000 words they need to thrive in school and beyond.”

Alex Quigley, Senior Associate at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), educational consultant and writer

We want all Wolsingham School students to develop their word-hoard and so each Faculty has identified the most important words that students need to know, understand and apply in their subject in order to succeed.

Some of these are tier 2 words – high frequency in written texts (gregarious, beneficial, complex, maintain); others are tier 3 words– subject specific, academic language (osmosis, trigonometry, onomatopoeia, parliament).

Frayer Models help students get to know a word and to appreciate its nuances; they can be used as a tool for exploring the application of words.  We like to include images to support students in committing new words to their memory.

Etymology is the study of the origins of words and the ways in which their meanings have changed over time.  Learning the stories behind new vocabulary can help students to recognise patterns and go on to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words independently.

Reading

“Lacking vital literacy skills holds a person back at every stage of their life. As a child they won’t be able to succeed at school, as a young adult they will be locked out of the job market, and as a parent they won’t be able to support their own child’s learning. This intergenerational cycle makes social mobility and a fairer society more difficult.”

National Literacy Trust

At Wolsingham School, reading is highly-valued and we take a three-part approach: reading for pleasure, academic reading within the curriculum and supporting struggling readers.  Below is a summary of our current reading provision, which is rooted in our core work on explicit vocabulary instruction.