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. Oracy is the ability to communicate effectively. At Southglade we want every child to find their voice. Our aim is to remove communication barriers and enable students to be confident and effective communicators at the end of primary school. Our aim as a school is to elevate speaking to the same status as reading and writing.

Teaching children oracy skills will not only enable them to increase confidence in talk within school but equip them for their future. At Southglade Primary and Nursery School our aim for oracy is to enable children to:

• Speak with confidence, clarity and eloquence.
• Recognise the importance of listening and learn to be an active listener.
• Be confident in the value of their own opinions and have the ability to express them.
• Have a bank of vocabulary they are able to use for different purposes.
• Sustain a logical argument, question, reason and respond to others appropriately.
• Be open-minded, to respect the contribution of others and to take account of their views.
• Share their learning in an engaging, informative way through presentations, showcases, drama, poetry and debate.

We use The Oracy Framework, which is made up of four strands (Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive, Social and Emotional- Taken from The Oracy Framework, Voice 21). 

Oracy across the Curriculum

Oracy is incorporated across our broad and balanced curriculum to develop understanding and higher order thinking. Children are given many opportunities to use their speaking and listening skills and develop their oracy skill set. 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 in discussions in a range of contexts including; vocabulary, immersion, debates, questioning and feedback.
• 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.
• Vocabulary- higher order (tier 3) vocabulary is shared and taught. Use of subject-specific language across all areas of the curriculum is used to support children's Oracy development and this is monitored through planning and book looks and pupil explanations of vocabulary.
• Southglade is a Royal Shakespeare Associate School and this contributes to focusing on improving Oracy skills, specifically in Years 5 and 6, through the work with Royal Shakespeare Company where we deliver the RSC pedagogy through bespoke drama workshops.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.