What Is Oracy?

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language.

Oracy develops students' confidence, articulacy and capacity to learn.

Voice 21.

Oracy is…

• Engaging with others ideas
• Reasoning together
• Listening to understand
• Changing people’s minds
• Telling compelling stories
• Developing arguments
• Expressing yourself
• Speaking up for what you believe in

Our Vision for Oracy

At Southglade Primary and Nursery School we are working hard to provide a high quality oracy education. With oracy at the heart of our curriculum, we are committed to building and embedding a culture of oracy. Purposeful talk is used to drive forward learning, through talk in the classroom, which has been planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured to enable all learners to develop the skills needed to talk effectively and with confidence. The deliberate, explicit and systematic teaching of oracy across phases and throughout the curriculum will support children to make progress in the four strands of oracy. We want every child at Southglade Primary School to find their voice. Oracy develops pupils' confidence, articulacy and capacity to learn. Providing a high quality oracy education empowers students, regardless of their background, to find their voice for success in school and in life. Effective communication skills are needed for students to succeed in later life. We part of the Voice 21 oracy programme which supports us to create an oracy embedded curriculum and enable pupils to develop speaking and listening skills.

Oracy across the Curriculum

Our school curriculum is rich in oracy opportunities:

• Maths- During maths lessons children have opportunities to discuss their learning, knowledge and reasoning. Children are able to enquire about their learning through maths talk and daily number sense starter activities.
• Writing- In English lessons our children engage with talk for writing to develop vocabulary and presentational talk.
• At Southglade Oracy is at the heart of feedback and assessment for learning enabling children to discuss their work and any misconceptions. Teachers challenge children through probing questions about their learning.
• Reading- In reading children experience Book Talk where they have to explain and provide evidence for their answers based on a text. They are able to present their answer to the class as their audience. Texts are discussed during reading lessons (vocabulary and comprehension) which are taught explicitly.
• We use knowledge organisers across school that include many talking points for children to reflect on during their curriculum driver lessons. Each half term children have an enquiry question for each curriculum driver which all of their learning stems from, this enables many Oracy opportunities.
• ICT- Across the school, children are given opportunities in ICT to present what they have learnt in computing. For example, presenting Google slides to coding robots. Also sharing their knowledge with peers on how to complete a task.
• PE- Children actively engage with peer feedback and are encouraged to evaluate each lesson. Sports Ambassadors lead and guide children in sports events and a focus active group weekly.
• Science- Scientific literacy is being developed through immersive experiences and children are encouraged to question their own predictions and results of experiments. The national curriculum for science reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Through lessons children learn scientific vocabulary and the ability to articulate scientific concepts clearly and precisely. The working scientifically objectives enable children to develop Oracy skills.
• RE- RE topics are split into big questions which immediately spark discussion in classrooms. Vocabulary is developed throughout the big questions and celebration days. 
• Pupil voice- At Southglade we have young ambassadors and a school council where members along with teaching staff regularly attend meetings to listen, respect and act upon the views of the children. Children also have opportunities to discuss their learning with curriculum co-ordinator leads through pupil voice sessions.
• EYFS is the start of our pupils’ oracy journey through school. Staff encourage oracy from an early age through talking stories, retelling stories, scaffolding conversations during free flow time and circle time class discussions. Any barriers to oracy are spotted and acted upon here and interventions to assist with speech are put in place. Communication in Early years is a prime learning area and enables children to meet other milestones at the end of the foundation stage.