A short quiz on the meta-skills of spoken language: listening attentively, taking turns, asking open questions, building on others. Tests understanding of WHEN and WHY these things matter, not just whether the child can recite them.
Best taken after the “Being a Good Listener” e-learning lesson. Questions are written in everyday situations so children connect the rules to real moments.
Directly targets NC spoken language requirement 3: “use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary”. Each card pairs a richer word with its plain meaning and a real sentence the child could say. Words are chosen to give immediate “upgrade” potential — swapping “big” for “enormous”, “nice” for “delightful”, “sad” for “miserable”.
Designed as a weekly rotation: pick one or two new words on a Monday, encourage the child to use them in conversation through the week, swap for new ones the following Monday. The teacher pack suggests a similar pattern for classroom use.
NC spoken language requirement 9 is explicit: pupils should participate in “discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates”. This activity book provides structured scenarios for each.
Five pages, each a different speaking situation: a shopkeeper at a market stall, a vet examining a poorly pet, a TV presenter introducing the weather, a news reporter on the scene, and a poem read aloud with expression. Each scenario gives an opening line, three example dialogue prompts, and space for the child to add their own.
Designed for two-person play (child + adult or sibling) — the talking IS the activity. Nothing to mark.
A short, practical guide for parents and carers. The Department for Education identifies spoken language as the foundation of everything else in primary English — but it’s also the strand parents have the most influence over, because most of it happens at home, not at school.
This guide explains why everyday conversation matters more than people realise, and gives four small, do-anywhere techniques: the “tell me more” rule, the “swap a word” game, the screen-off dinner, and the goldmine of a 10-minute story-time chat.
Spoken language is the hardest strand to teach systematically and the hardest to assess. This teacher pack maps every resource to its NC requirement, recommends classroom routines that genuinely embed the skills (rather than tick-box “speaking lessons”), and gives practical assessment guidance.
Particularly useful: a section on managing dominant talkers and reluctant talkers, the two perennial problems of KS1 oracy.
The warm-up spelling assessment. Plurals (adding -s or -es), simple suffix endings (-ing, -ed, -er, -est) without root changes, and the prefix un-.
The Main test covering the full KS1 spelling rules: plurals, suffixes (including root changes), contractions, and common exception words (the words children can’t sound out phonetically).
The stretch test for confident Year 2 pupils. Homophones (their/there/they’re), harder exception words, complex suffixes, and the trickier Y2 spelling patterns.