Oracy

Oracy is the ability to use the skills of speaking, listening and non-verbal communication for a wide range of purposes.

At our school, we endeavour to empower all our pupils with life skills that will enable them to lead a happy and fulfilling life, feel a sense of belonging and make a valuable contribution to society. We feel it is important that children feel happy and secure so that they can work to the best of their ability and make good progress, as well as discover their own individual passions and strengths. The school offers a broad and balanced curriculum which covers all aspects of school life to allow them to thrive in both their subjects and in their life as a whole. The teaching of oracy is an important part of our personal development curriculum which supports children in their communication and reasoning skills, as well as building their confidence with different kinds of speaking in school and in their wider life beyond school.

We are proud that our school is a Voice 21 school.  This means that we work with the registered charity Voice 21 to empower all children to have a voice and make progress with their oracy.  You can see this around our school in different ways.  

We use the Voice 21 Oracy Framework to talk about oracy in our school, which gives us a shared language for knowing how we can improve our oracy.  We have broken these statements down into a progression model so that we know exactly where our children are working with their oracy and what we are working on next.

We also use a wide range of oracy strategies in our teaching.  These include:

• Use of sentence stems, linked to our progression model
• Use of a wide range of talk tasks
• Use of talk tactics, like Ask, Build or Challenge
• Use of our Listening Ladder to help teach good listening
• Opportunities for the children to use exploratory talk, such as when investigating a problem in Maths or solving a Science problem together
• Opportunities for presentational talk, such as at our end of term Exhibitions, and other events across the year, such as during our School Council Elections, Black History Month, Anti-Bullying Week, Children's Mental Health Week and others.

We are continuing to expand our provision of oracy and more will be communicated about this important area of learning in the future.