Oracy

Oracy

“Talk is the most powerful tool of communication in the classroom and it’s fundamentally central to the acts of teaching and learning”. Professor Frank Hardman.

 

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. At Forge Wood Primary School, oracy is a vital tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them.  There are many benefits to developing oracy including:

 

• Building confidence and self-esteem
• Improving social skills
• Developing vocabulary
• Allowing pupils to reason and challenge others’ opinions and understanding
• Strengthening authorial voice in writing
• Strengthening use of Standard English in spoken and written language
• Teaching the distinction between formal and informal language
• Allowing pupils to play with language and rehearse ideas 
• Strengthening expression, fluency and understanding of grammatical structures and language features in reading
• Enabling children to articulate their mathematical fluency, reasoning and problem-solving ideas confidently
• Allowing children to demonstrate their scientific understanding – hypothesising and speculating
• Providing children with a frame to express their opinions, supporting them with evidence, across the curriculum

We aim to encourage confident fluent speakers, who can articulate their ideas in a wide range of situations.  We use the Oracy Framework from Voice 21 to explicitly teach the different strands: physical, linguistic, cognitive and social and emotional.

 

 

All adults have high expectations around oracy.  They model and correct speech.  Children are ‘cold called’ to give answers and children are encouraged to build on or explain if they agree or disagree with a peers idea.  Sentence stems are used to develop ideas and oracy guidelines have been created to support children in all areas of the curriculum.

 

Students will experience a range of oracy explicit activities across the curriculum including:

• Talk partners
• Talking trios
• Debates
• Presentations
• Collaborative work
• Talking like an expert
• Speeches
• Reading aloud
• Tell a joke (as part of comic relief)

Feedback is given throughout lessons by teachers aiming to build the confidence of all students in their oracy skills.