No Pens Wednesday 2022

Speech and language UK

No Pens Day Wednesday is an annual day dedicated to talking and understanding words that takes place in schools, colleges and early years settings across the country.

Talking and understanding words is fundamental for everything we do – learning, reading and writing, managing emotions, developing friendships and entering employment. However, speech and language skills are underrepresented in the curriculum in comparison to reading and writing. 

Speech and Language UK provides resources, advice and guidance for participating schools and settings so they can get the most out of the day.

By putting down your pens and shouting out about talking and understanding words, you can:

• Develop pupils’ talking and understanding of words skills
• Develop staff’s understanding of talking and understanding of words skills and embed them into your curriculum
• Try out new teaching approaches and engage pupils in exciting pens-free activities
• Identify pupils who need additional support to develop their talking and understanding of words

We had a great time yesterday during no pens day…we talked about other ways we could show our learning and how important it was to communicate clearly with each other. It was great fun to practise our speaking and listening skills too.

In Maths, we learnt about our 9 times table and used a clever trick with our hands to work out how to solve the 9s. We then played a game in pairs.

In English, we imagined we were Dr Barnardo meeting Jim Jarvis for the first time. We created a role play in pairs where we acted out the scenario when the two characters met.

In Science, we created a model of the human ear using tissue paper, this helped us to retell how our ears hear a sound. Thank you for a great day and for working so hard