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Oracy

We believe spoken language to be fundamental to the achievement of all pupils. Developing effective oracy skills is key to raising academic standards, developing wellbeing and confidence, developing social skills and to ensuring that when pupils become adults they can be successfully employed and economically secure.  

Oracy is central to our curriculum and to the way our pupils learn. The development of oracy skills is embedded across our curriculum learning with important skills being developed and called upon in daily lessons. We strive to develop these skills through explicit teaching, group discussions and through the modelling of effective speech. We have high expectations for how pupils communicate and challenge them to elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas.

We aim that all children will:

  • Order and develop their thinking and express their thoughts clearly 
  • Express and justify their feelings, opinions with increasing clarity and effectiveness and respect the opinion of others; 
  • Communicate with ease in varied circumstances for different audiences and purposes:
    • Exploratory Talk – the talk we use to explore and develop our thinking, and to negotiate together - Building subject knowledge - Developing and deepening understanding - Exploring concepts - Learning from others - Developing inquiry and reasoning skills.
    • Presentational Talk – the talk we use to speak effectively in front of others, presenting information, our ideas or our view points - Explicit teaching of talk skills - Preparing for a specific audience - Developing confidence - Crafting speech for a specific purpose

In teaching oracy skills, we focus on four different strands to ensure pupils develop the skills, language and confidence to be effective communicators and thinkers.

The four areas we focus on are:

  • Physical: Voice; Body Language
  • Linguistic: Vocabulary; Language; Rhetorical Techniques
  • Cognitive: Content; Structure; Clarifying and Summarising; Reasoning
  • Social and Emotional: Working with Others; Listening and Responding; Confidence in Speaking; Audience Awareness

Throughout the different key stages, we teach our pupils specific skills and approaches to developing their oracy skills, building on these as they progress through the school. These include learning to effectively use a range of important roles in discussions and conversations:

  • Instigator – being able to start a discussion effectively 
  • Builder – being able to add to or run with an idea 
  • Challenger – being able to disagree respectfully with an idea and present an alternative argument 
  • Clarifier – being able to make this clear and simplify ideas by asking questions 
  • Prober – being able to dig deeper into the argument, asking for evidence or justification of ideas 
  • Summariser – being able to present their reflections on the discussion, offer a conclusion or balanced assessment of the main points made in the discussion 

We also teach children the importance of using the following discussion guidelines to ensure everyone is included and heard:

  • Always respect each other’s right to express their ideas 
  • Invite someone to contribute to the discussion by asking a question 
  • Give proof that you are listening 
  • We clarify, challenge, summarise and build on each other’s’ ideas 
  • Be prepared to change your mind 
  • Be able to come to a shared agreement 

 

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