Page 14 - The East Sussex Way

Case Study 2: Starting Year 7 History with a Talk-centred
Approach

• Chailey School, East Sussex, is a secondary school with a
largely rural catchment area and 810 pupils on roll.

• The number of pupils in receipt of the pupil premium grant is
lower than the national average.
• 32% of pupils have an identiÞ ed learning need.

The context

The history classroom should be a noisy and vibrant place where
pupils’ voices are heard and valued in every lesson, but the word
gap at transition means that some pupils lack conÞ dence when it

comes to speaking in lessons. Arriving from a high number of feeder
schools, they do not have a common understanding of what ‘good
talk’ looks like in the classroom.

It is important to establish a consensus on how to achieve high-
quality paired, group and whole-class discussion so that oracy
activities are purposeful and productive. We also wanted to give
Year 7 pupils ample time to speak to their peers in lessons in order to
build relationships, but we needed these opportunities for oracy to
remain focused on learning.

Action taken

In 2021, we taught a new scheme of learning on Islamic Civilisations
at the beginning of Year 7. Chailey School takes pupils from a high
number of primary schools with varied history curricula. We therefore
chose a topic which very few pupils have encountered before, to
create a level playing Þ eld and fresh start for all.

We designed the lesson sequence with a strong focus on tier 2

vocabulary and oracy in an attempt to bridge the word gap
at transition. We hoped that, as a result, we would see pupils
instinctively reaching for targeted tier 2 vocabulary and thus
improving their ability to write historical explanations in a written
assessment at the end of term.

We built every lesson around collaborative speaking tasks, which
grew in length and complexity over time. Our strategies can be seen
in Appendix 1. We curated a list of key tier 2 and 3 words which we
explicitly taught and revisited over the scheme of learning, and we
encouraged pupils to use the key vocabulary in their speech and

9 gave them ample opportunities to do so.