Building Understanding

Changes and Transitions (Primary)

Text sharing: Growing Up

Story recall

Matching symbols and objects

Making a photo album

Celebrations and Festivals (Primary)

Comprehension & recounting Stories: 'This Is Me'

Instructional Texts: Creating a Card

Following a recipe

Turn taking skills

Clothes and Fashion (Primary)

Text sharing: Dressing up

Using puppets to stimulate conversation

Making a sock puppet

Sequencing simple instructions when making your sock puppet

Seasons (Primary)

Text sharing rhyming books: 'Up, Down, Around'

Reading and writing: Combining two words

Instructional texts: Planting seeds

Writing and performing: A simple colour poem

Our World (Primary)

Language comprehension and sharing chants: 'We're Going on a Lion Hunt', a sensory story

Reading and writing: The Leader Says...

Matching symbols to sequence story

Following symbol and verbal directions

Holidays (Primary)

Story time and travel

Packing for a holiday

Writing for a purpose: Lists

Story telling: A day out

BU Communication and Language (Primary)

Changes and Transitions (Secondary)

Reading together: 'This Is Me'

Writing: 'This Is Me' (A Portrait/Avatar)

Composition: 'This Is Me' (Autobiography)

Celebrations and Festivals (Secondary)

Comprehension: Scrooge from Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'

Writing: Festive cards

Reading and composition: Festive food recipes

Speaking skills: Party conversation

Clothes and Fashion (Secondary)

Reading together: 'My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh'

Key verbs and positional language: Fashion show!

Key verbs and positional language: Upcycling clothing

Writing for a purpose: Fashion show posters

Seasons (Secondary)

Comprehension: 'Autumn Fires'

Composition: The weather forecast

Writing and performing: Poem

Our World (Secondary)

Comprehension: 'The Drum', a tale from India

Exploring other cultures

Descriptive writing: Drums

Holidays (Secondary)

Reading together: 'The Beach'

Positional language: Packing for a holiday (Role Play)

Composition and writing: Packing for a holiday

Storytelling: 'My Day Out'

BU Communication and Language (Secondary)

﻿My name's Alison. And I'm the subject lead for the specialist communication and language department here at Oak National Academy. I am delighted to be able to introduce to you the work of our department. Myself and eight special teachers have worked tirelessly to pull together a series of lessons to support schools and families with further learning opportunities. This is particularly important at a time when you may find that you're spending more extended periods of time learning in the home environment. Teaching pupils with special educational needs is extremely personalised and one size does not fit all. Therefore, what we have produced for you is a starting point. You know your child best, and therefore, you may find it necessary to adapt some of the content and the communication styles to match your child's needs. I'm now going to take you through our subject content. The Units. We have divided the curriculum into six units. Changes and Transitions, Celebrations and Festivals, Clothes and Fashion, Seasons, Our World, Holidays. These are our suggested order of units. However, you may wish to change them to match your school's own themes or topics. Early development. For each unit we are going to be delivering two lessons, a video lesson and a PowerPoint resource lesson. In our video lesson, our teachers will be sharing with you a sensory story to start the topic off. They will provide demonstrations on how to deliver a sensory story, the questions you should use and the activities you may want to include. The PowerPoint resource lesson will be fully downloadable so that you will be able to adapt this, to meet the needs of your specific learners. Each lesson will also look at the areas of engagement, initiation, persistence, exploration, anticipation, and realisation, building understanding, and applying learning. We provide secondary and primary-specific content. Each unit begins with a suggested text and the teacher will take you through the story or poem and includes support on how to use questioning and recall. The other lessons will cover content relating to sequencing, grapheme and phoneme correspondence, following instructions written and verbal, positional language, writing for a purpose, one and two level word understanding, descriptive language and recount. Each unit is split into four lessons. Lessons 1 and 2 are video lessons. Here the teacher will be visible on screen to talk you through and guide you with the lesson. Lessons 3 and 4 are PowerPoint lessons. These lessons a resource pack that take you through an activity step-by-step. These will be available to view on screen, download as a PowerPoint, so that you can adapt, and many of these will also be accompanied by downloads with principal resources. All of our lessons are accompanied by symbols. With each lesson, please use your child's preferred communication method. The Levels. The Early Development level is for pupils who are engaged in non-subject-specific study, working below pre-K stage standard 1. The pupils working at this level, the most important aspect is to ensure that they're engaged in their learning. in order to gain engagement with your child, it is essential that you use activities and stimuli that will engage and motivate your child. Engagement can be observed as five different areas. These are initiation, persistence, exploration, anticipation, and realisation. To provide you an example of what these might look like, for initiation, does your child investigate a stimulus or activity to bring about a desired outcome? Persistence. Does your child sustain their interest in a stimulus or activity? Exploration. Does your child show interest and curiosity in an activity? Anticipation. Does your child predict or associate different stimuli with activities or events? And Realisation. When your child interacts with stimuli and activities, do they show excitement, delight, or possibly fear? Pupils working at Early Development level should be given opportunities to do two different actions in a sequence, demonstrate understanding of cause and effect, make purposeful actions on their everyday environment and begin to participate with an adult in reciprocal games, begin to notice and react to a range of sensory stimuli and respond to environmental changes and to briefly focus on activities and experiences and demonstrate simple reflex responses to high contrast sensory cues. Pupils working at the building understanding level will be engaged in subject-specific content and maybe beginning to work within or working at pre-key stage standard 1. This slide provides some examples of the things your child may be able to do or is working towards. Language comprehension. They may be following single keyword instructions. Be able to indicate characters or objects in familiar text by responding to "Where is...?" questions. Show anticipation, join in with some familiar actions and words when prompted, and communicate, "Yes" and "No", In their preferred method of communication. They may also be able to demonstrate single word understanding, by answering "Who, where and what?" questions. Join in with predictable phrases, follow simple two keyword instructions, differentiate by colour, and respond to questions about immediate events. Composition. Pupils may be able to say, sign and select symbols, complete sentences. They may be able to repeat, copy and imitate single words signs or phrases, or use single words, signs and symbols for familiar objects. Pupils may also be able to say a clause to complete a sentence that's said aloud, combine two key ideas and repair communication breakdowns in their preferred method of communication. Transcription. Your pupil may be able to draw lines or shapes, give meaning to their emerging writing and understand that marks and symbols convey meaning. They may also be able to form correctly or recognise 10-plus lowercase letters and identify or write these graphemes on hearing the corresponding phonemes. They may also be using their letter knowledge in emergent writing. And for word reading, pupils will be listening and responding to familiar rhymes and stories. They'll be handling books in appropriate ways, holding them the right way up and turning pages. They may also be matching the photos. Pupils should also be given opportunities to say single sounds for the 10-plus graphemes that they know, read words by blending known graphemes with help, match and choose symbols and ask simple questions. Following on from Building Understanding, we have Applying Learning. This level would be appropriate for pupils who are working beyond pre-K stage standard 1. This slide provides some examples of what your child may already be able to do or what they are working towards. Language comprehension. Pupils will be responding to questions that require simple recall, recount a short sequence events and follow requests and instructions, with three keywords, pupils should also be given opportunities to talk about events in stories, retell some of the story and engage in role-play, responding to questions, including "Why and how?" questions. Composition. Pupils may be making up their own phrases or short sentences, writing captions or short phrases using the graphemes that they know and communicating about ideas about the past, present and future events. Pupils should also be given opportunities to make up their own sentences, say them aloud in their preferred method of communication, write down sentences and use possessives and conjunctions. Transcription. Pupils will be forming correctly lowercase letters, spelling words with known graphemes, producing their own free writing in their preferred method of communication and writing separate words. Pupils should also be given opportunities to form their lowercase letters correctly, write or identify 40-plus graphemes, spell words, identifying phonemes, spell a few common exception words, write for a range of purposes. This may include letters, lists, or stories, and begin to use upper and lowercase letters. Word reading. Pupils will be saying a single sound for graphemes, reading accurately and predicting elements of narrative. They should be able to distinguish between print and pictures in text and understand the conventions of reading, moving from left to right, top to bottom on a page. Pupils should also be given opportunities to say sounds for 40-plus graphemes, reading accurately by blending sounds in words, read some common exception words, begin to read aloud books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge and associate sounds with patterns and rhymes, with syllables and with words or symbols. You may find that your child sits between levels. This is normal development. And it may be appropriate for you to look at lesson content across the levels. If you're unsure which level to focus on, ask your child's teacher and they will be able to support you. As a parent, always speak to your child's class teacher to find out which levels and which activities would be most suitable for you to use. As a teacher, you may want to download our PowerPoint lessons and adapt these for the specific needs to your class. We hope you find all of our content of views over this next coming academic year. Sharing pupil's work with Oak National. We'd appreciate it, if you could encourage your parents and carers to share their child's work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Communication and Language

Communication and Language – Building Understanding

All units

1. Changes and Transitions (Primary)

2. Celebrations and Festivals (Primary)

3. Clothes and Fashion (Primary)

4. Seasons (Primary)

5. Our World (Primary)

6. Holidays (Primary)

7. Changes and Transitions (Secondary)

8. Celebrations and Festivals (Secondary)

9. Clothes and Fashion (Secondary)

10. Seasons (Secondary)

11. Our World (Secondary)

12. Holidays (Secondary)