Oracy

Alston Primary School are working with Voice 21 to develop our pupil’s oracy skills to enhance their speaking and listening. We are committed to transforming oracy teaching and learning across the school so that all children access and benefit from high-quality oracy education.

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

Oracy is a powerful tool for learning. By teaching our children to become more effective speakers and listeners, we are empowering them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. The benefits of Oracy go far beyond academic achievement and employability, they also improve a range of social, emotional and interpersonal skills, including self-confidence, self-awareness, resilience and empathy. We are passionate about all children finding their voice to succeed in school and life.

Oracy Framework

The Oracy framework outlines the various skills that our children need to develop in order to deal with a range of different talk situations. This framework has been developed by The University of Cambridge and Voice 21.

We use student-friendly version of the framework, within all phase groups, so that children gain a clear understanding of all the strands. There is a clear progression as previous skills are built upon, leading to more ambitious objectives and increasingly complex vocabulary.

We teach Oracy skills in many different ways at school so that children develop a deeper understanding. Some examples include through:

• Paired talk
• Group discussion
• Debating
• Drama
• Presentations

Teachers plan lessons with oracy in mind. Teaching is structured so that all children are supported in developing their oracy skills in a range of ways, for example, through using sentence stems to scaffold talk and using talk tactics to discuss differing viewpoints.