Voice 21: Blog items
Date: 1st Dec 2025 @ 6:31pm
Over the next week, Year 1 will be reading the story 'Stickman' and completing lots of different activites relating to this story. Today we began with an oracy session, to learn more about the characters, setting and key vocabulary. We then ordered the story, focusing on the key events and retelling the story with our peers.
Date: 27th Nov 2025 @ 9:56am
In this lesson, children explored oracy skills by immersing themselves in the story Cave Baby. After listening to the book, pupils became different characters from the story, such as Cave Baby, the mammoth, and the parents. They used key phrases from the text alongside their own imaginative ideas to bring the narrative to life through role play. This activity encouraged expressive language, turn-taking, and active listening, while promoting confidence in speaking. By adopting character perspectives, children practiced using tone, gesture, and vocabulary effectively, deepening their understanding of the story and enhancing their ability to communicate creatively.
Date: 27th Nov 2025 @ 9:49am
This week, our children have been developing their Oracy skills, focusing especially on tone and intonation as they read aloud the opening of their own traditional tales. Our new class story is set at Christmas, following a main character who adores the festive season—until a miserable goblin appears, determined to destroy Christmas and dampen their joyful spirit.
As the children shared their stories so far, they experimented with using warm, excited tones to capture the magic of Christmas, then shifted to grumbly, low voices to bring the goblin’s gloomy personality to life. It was wonderful to see them thinking carefully about how their voices can enhance meaning, atmosphere, and character.
The classroom was filled with expression, confidence, and creativity. We can’t wait to continue developing our tales and see how our young storytellers bring their festive adventures to life!
Year 2- Working on our oracy skills!
Date: 10th Nov 2025 @ 5:16pm
In this lesson the children worked on the Social and Emotional strand of Oracy- Working with others. The children thought again about the importance of listening and then focussed on the skills of teamwork. We firstly did group activities in which we had to solve problems. We then used our ABC to discuss debate topics and had to express our opinions while listening to others.
Date: 6th Nov 2025 @ 8:21pm
In our Oracy lesson to start this half term, we looked at Social and Emotional Working with others. We recapped how we show we’re listening and how to take turns appropriately by listening carefully but also responding using our ABC talk tactics. We looked at problems, such as being stranded on an island surrounded by wild animals and we discussed what our solution would be. The children organised themselves into talking trios to discuss these problems and then used the agree, build and challenge stem sentences to support their discussions as a whole group.
Date: 9th Oct 2025 @ 4:31pm
This week Boundary Primary School celebrated Harvest Festival. Year 6 led the celebration assembly together with our special guest, Reverend Peter. We talked about being thankful for the food we eat, our good health and the life we live. The children and their families helped by donating food to Vincent House.Thank you to everyone for their support.
Date: 7th Oct 2025 @ 6:34pm
Over this half term, we have been completing lots of tasks in our provision to practise our reading, writing, maths and oracy skills. We have retold stories, represented numbers, ordered numbers, practised number and letter formation and worked on fine motor skills, We have been working on completing these short tasks with increasing independence, to consolidate prior learning.
Date: 18th Sep 2025 @ 9:27am
In our first Oracy lesson, we explored the physical side of speaking and communication. We looked at how facial expressions, posture, voice projection, tonal variation, and pace of speech can change how we speak and how others understand us. It was a fun and lively session! We pulled funny faces in the mirror, practised breathing and humming exercises, and even recited Humpty Dumpty using different tones and speeds. It helped us understand that speaking clearly isn’t just about words—it’s also about how we use our bodies and voices. We can’t wait for the next session!
Date: 18th Sep 2025 @ 9:15am
In today's lesson we looked at the key question, 'How did the Maya become so successful?' We looked at a range of evidence and sources to determine what the Maya learned to do over timethat made them able to thrive and survive in their environment. We spent time looking through key vocabulary to enable us to fully understand our learning. Together we decided that the Maya were successful over time because they:
- Solved problems
- Used resources available to make tools
- They had a hierarchal system to ensure everyone played a key role in the tribe's survival
Year 4 - Guided Reading and Oracy
Date: 16th Sep 2025 @ 4:00pm
As part of our weekly guided reading journey, pupils spent today's lesson reading sections of a non-chronological report. Having listened to the class teacher model how to read it clearly and with expression, pupils read it to themselves and then aloud to a partner to build their confidence. Some pupils were brave enough to read small sections to the class.
Date: 11th Sep 2025 @ 4:12pm
This week, Year 5 have been exploring a news report about the potential ban of energy drinks for under-16s. The children engaged in thoughtful discussions around the topic and examined key vocabulary from the text, including excessive, fluctuation, signalling, ban, and voluntarily.
To deepen their understanding, pupils answered comprehension questions, developing their ability to retrieve information and interpret meaning. They also worked in groups to perform sections of the news report in front of the class, building their confidence in public speaking and teamwork.
It has been a fantastic opportunity for the children to develop both their reading skills and their awareness of current health-related issues.
Year 6 - Goals and Aspirations
Date: 8th Sep 2025 @ 7:02pm
In today’s lesson, we discussed our goals. We completed our leaves for Boundary’s tree of goals and then talked about how we could achieve these. We completed a ‘goal’ mountain where we looked at the goal, challenges that may stop us from achieving the goal and who can help us. We finished by discussing the importance of having high aspirations.
Date: 8th Sep 2025 @ 4:30pm
Today we began our Science unit of Light by recapping all the work the children did in Year 3. This included discussing sources of light and which were natural and which were artificial. We also talked in groups about what we could remember about reflection and shadows.
Date: 8th Jul 2025 @ 5:56pm
Alongside the rest of the school, Year 1 have spent lots of time over the past few weeks perfecting two poems for our Boundary choral speaking competition. Today, we perfomed 'Crabby' and 'Rumble in the Jungle' for the rest of our school. We impressed the judges with our beaming smiles, clear pronunciation and Makaton signs!
Date: 16th May 2025 @ 1:54pm
As part of their writing journey, year 5 pupils have been working collaboratively to write part of a historical narrative. Working together, pupils have changed part of the classical poem, The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes, into a narrative.
Date: 7th May 2025 @ 9:33pm
This week, we used our amazing oracy skills in our Maths lessons.
Date: 9th Apr 2025 @ 4:26pm
Today was No Pen Day and once we again we had a focus on Oracy. We started the day with some discussions topics and talked to our partners about what we thought. We then opened up the discussion to the whole class and used our talk tactics to include everyone, including agree, build and challenge. In Guided Reading we looked at orally answering questions on given texts and challenged each other to give thorough answers. In Reading into Writing, we took part in a teacher model/shared write session on explanatory texts.
Date: 8th Apr 2025 @ 8:13pm
Today, we celebrated our No Pen Morning by having a fantastic oracy lesson! We focused on the importance of listening and joining in when we're having discussions. We even recapped our amazing strategies like agreeing, building on someone else’s ideas, and challenging answers respectfully. We also shared the different roles we can take, like being the instigator who starts the conversation, the prober who asks questions, and the summariser who wraps it all up nicely. One of our fun activities was figuring out which objects were the odd one out and spotting similarities and differences—lots of great discussions were had! In Maths, we learned about volume and capacity. We measured different containers to see how much they could hold, ordering them from least to most. We discovered that some looked different but held the same amount of water, so we poured from one to the other! We even tackled some tricky capacity statements, working out intervals and volumes of jugs. What a brilliant day!
Date: 8th Apr 2025 @ 10:18am
For no pen morning, we used our oracy skills in both Reading into Writing and Guided Reading. We are learning about poems on a theme in Reading into Writing and we had a poem about Spring in Guided Reading. In Reading into Writing, it was over to us! It was time for our shared write. We used our figurative language skills and typed a few verses ecah. Then we put them together as one poem and performed them.
Reception Learn about the Lifecycle of a Frog.
Date: 31st Mar 2025 @ 9:22pm
During our spring walk the children noticed some frogspawn in our school pond. We took a small amount of frogspawn back to the classroom to observe what was happening. The children enjoyed using the magnifying glasses to look closely at the frogspawn and used a range of new vocabulary to desrcibe what they could see. During our oracy session we introduced some new vocabularly and practiced projecting our voices when saying the words. We looked at some different images and watch some short video clips and discusses as a class what we could see and what we thought was happening in the pictures. The children practised using the a range of different sentence starters and expanding their sentences using because. The children used our signals for agree, build and challenge to beging to have a discussion with their peers.
"I think the frog is laying its eggs" Lily-Mae
"I agree with Lilly-Mae. IT's calle frogspawn" Lilah
"Next the tadpoles nibble a hole and swim in the pond" Freyja
"They get front and back legs" Rosie
"It's called a froglet because it has a long tail" Dennis.
The children then worked indentedently to correctly order the pictures in the lifecycle and label the pictures with the correct vocabulary. Some of the children even chose to paint a picture of the frog in the pond. Come and have a look at our learning.
Year 2- Science and Geography Day!
Date: 20th Mar 2025 @ 4:10pm
When Science and Geography come together…
Wow, what an amazing day we have had at Boundary today as we had a very special visit from Thomas, the Gorilla, and some of his rainforest friends. We started the day meeting Thomas and learning all about his habitat in the rainforest. We were shocked to hear about the impact human behaviour has on our world and Thomas’ home.
The morning was filled with utter excitement as we got the opportunity to meet an adorable baby Sloth and Cherokee and we learnt about how they adapt to their environments and the problems that they overcome.
We then focused on the rainforest, looking at the animals that live there and the plants that grow. We worked in teams to research different aspects of the rainforest and then used our oracy skills to present to the class, teaching them about our focus area.
Date: 18th Mar 2025 @ 11:10am
In this History lesson, the pupils in year 5 were in-role as ancient Athenians debating whether Athens should use their wealth to build the Parthenon. Half of the class were supporters of Pericles, who wanted to create a great monument, whereas the rest of the class thought the money could be put to better use: i.e. defending Greece against Persia. Pupils used their oracy skills to instigate a conversation; to agree, build or challenge others opinions; or ask for clarification if they are not clear on what was said. Pupils also learned about ostracism and how Ancient Athenians voted.
Date: 12th Mar 2025 @ 8:35am
In PSHE, we looked at how each one of us are different. We then looked at how we need to value and respect the differences between us all. We looked at some topic cards and had a class discussion about how we would act in different situations and how people would be feeling. We used our oracy skills to agree, build and challenge. The children looked at instigating the conversation and taking ownership of them moving the conversation on between themselves.
Date: 27th Feb 2025 @ 10:04am
In Oracy, we played a game of ‘Taboo’ to start. We had to use appropriate vocabulary to describe things on a card but we were not allowed to use some common words! Next, we practised how we would say a sentence in different ways. Finally, our main task was focusing on reasoning. We had to decide what we would do if we ruled the world and give a reason why. Other children in class then had to disagree with the statement and explain their challenge.
