By Angela Schofield, Oracy Lead, Excelsior Multi-Academy Trust
Pull quote: “(Oracy) develops their confidence and gives them a sense of belonging, that their voice is welcomed and valued.”
The role of oracy in the school curriculum was brought to a wider audience when Sir Keir Starmer discussed in a recent speech on education policy.
What can teachers to support this area of skills development?
I find the Voice 21 model helpful as it breaks oracy down into four skills strands, which makes it much clearer what skills we are actually talking about:
Physical
Voice, including pace, tone, pronunciation and projection
Body language, including gestures, posture, facial expression and eye contact
Linguistic
Vocabulary
Language, including register and grammar
Rhetorical Techniques, including metaphor, irony, humour, and mimicry
Cognitive
Content, including choice of content to convey meaning and intention
Structure, including organisation of talk
Clarifying and summarising, including seeking information through questioning
Self-regulation, including maintaining focus on the task, and time management
Reasoning, including giving reasons to support one’s views, and critically examining ideas and views expressed by others
Social and Emotional
Working with others, including guiding or managing interactions, and turn taking
Listening and responding, including active and appropriate responses
Confidence in speaking, including self-assurance, liveliness, and flair
Audience awareness, including taking account of the level of understanding of the audience
(CREDIT: Voice 21. Illustration, available at https://voice21.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-Oracy-Framework-1-1.pdf)
At Excelsior schools, we have developed a progression map for these skills, which shows which skills are taught each half-term. This is freely available to schools and parents. It’s important to note that there is no mention of English in the framework, these skills can be practiced in any language.
Oracy is important because research has shown that it supports children in academic learning but also in social and emotional wellbeing. It develops their confidence and gives them a sense of belonging, that their voice is welcomed and valued. It is also key to closing the disadvantage gap. Early language and communication skills are closely linked to attainment throughout schooling, and to earnings later in life. The earlier we start to develop oracy skills, the better.
Let me share some of what we are doing which you may want to introduce into your school and lesson plans.
In our schools, oracy is part of every lesson and is included in unstructured times such as break and lunch. It isn’t an add-on or an extra lesson, it’s the way we teach. We have a mantra of, ‘every voice heard every day’. We teach presentation talk, such as presenting your work to the class, reciting a poem or delivering a speech, as well as exploratory talk. This is where children are learning through talk, they haven’t refined their thinking yet or come to a conclusion, they are exploring the ideas under discussion through speaking to a partner, small group discussion or a whole-class discussion or debate. We also focus on oracy outside lessons with chatterbox corners set up in the playground with talk prompts and sentence stems, and lunchtime staff who are trained in oracy, so they support children’s talk.
Oracy is for every child, so we scaffold talk carefully. We provide sentence stems for each year group, so they know how to begin their contribution. We use the Tower Hamlets Progression in Language Structures which is freely available online. We also give lots of time for thinking and rehearsal for children who need a little extra support.
In addition, we involve our families in our oracy provision, delivering oracy workshops to teach them about the oracy framework and how we use this in school and provide ideas for games to try at home. We have regular parent showcases hosted by the children rather than the staff. Most of us know that often, when you ask your child, ‘What did you do today?’, they have no recollection of doing anything! We provide a ‘Let’s get talking’ section in our newsletter where each year group writes a question to ask at home, such as ‘Why did the wolf want to blow the house down?’ or ‘What is the difference between evaporation and condensation?’. These are linked to what they’ve done in school that week and are a useful prompt to get families talking. Simple ideas which elevate the quality of talk.
We have a public speaking curriculum to assess progress in presentation talk. In Reception, they speak to their small class; in Year1, they deliver an assembly to another class; in Year 2, they deliver an assembly to their year group; in Year 3, they present their ideas to the Pupil Parliament; in Year 4, they present to the Senior Leadership Team; in Year 5, they present their learning to parents and carers in a flipped parents’ evening; and in Year 6, they take part in our speech competition Speak Up Speak Out!, which is open to Year 6 pupils across the country. We do this to ensure every Excelsior child is fully prepared for all the contexts for talk they will encounter in secondary school.
To support your work in the classroom you may want to suggest to the following ideas to parents
Reading aloud. Hearing you read a story, with all the different voices, is not only fun and a time to bond with them, but it also supports them to understand how tone of voice can change the meaning of words and make it more interesting to the listener. Hearing a fluent reader, while they look at the text also helps children to develop fluency in reading.
Encourage them to express opinions, agree and disagree with reasons. This develops reasoning skills and vocabulary and shows them that it’s OK to disagree. A great thing to encourage is changing your mind when someone has given a good reason. You can also frame questions as talking points to encourage extended responses.
Talking to your child at home is important, but the evidence shows that it is dialogue that helps children learn language and social skills. Turn taking in a conversation is the important part, so try to avoid the questions, answer, move on cycle of interactions. Just chatting and exchanging ideas is so important for child development and hugely enjoyable.
Have fun with listening games. Games such as 1-20, I Spy, or describing an image while your child draws it and vice versa, are all quick games, which develop listening skills too. To practise listening specifically, read a short text and then give a list of words, can they remember which words were from the text? Simple riddle games are good for this too.
Here is one to try:
Explain you are going to tell a story and then ask questions about it. You’re the bus driver. There are 5 people on the bus. At the first stop, 2 people get off and a lady with a feathery hat hops on. At the second stop, a man with purple trousers gets off and a boy with a spotty dog gets on. At the third stop, 4 people get off and 3 people get on. At the fourth stop, 2 girls get on carrying a large basket with a shiny red bow. (You can continue for longer depending on your child’s age). Finally, ask the question – How old is the bus driver? (The clue is in the first 5 words)
Explore vocabulary, start with one word and find as many synonyms as you can, or find opposites, or find out where words come from. You’ll uncover facts that children will find fascinating. There are plenty of examples online but for older children, the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins is a useful resource as is the children’s book The Dictionary of Difficult Words.
As teachers we know the importance of oracy to children’s lives. I hope the ideas presented here will help you in your invaluable work. Every child deserves their voice to be heard.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angela Schofield is the Oracy Lead at Excelsior Multi-Academy Trust. For more information head to:
Web: excelsiormat.org/
Twitter: @excelsiorMAT
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/excelsior-multi-academy-trust
