Oracy

Oracy is a vital part of the curriculum at West Town Primary Academy. We recognise the extreme importance of being able to talk well and learn through talk and the difference that this makes to outcomes for our pupils.  We are working in partnership with Voice 21 and Whole Education to develop our approach, expertise and to refine these crucial skills. 

Oracy is integral to our School Development Plan and is very much a work in progress and not the finished product.

What is Oracy?

‘Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language.’ (Voice21).  At West Town Primary Academy, we are teaching our children to be confident, articulate speakers and effective listeners; these two skills are fundamental to all we do now and in the children’s lives when they leave West Town Primary Academy.

Why do we have a focus on Oracy?

We are proud of the rich and vibrant backgrounds of our children and families. Together, our children can speak over 50 different languages with many children learning more than 2 different languages. We are also aware though, that many of our children need additional opportunities to learn to talk and learn through talk to enhance their proficiency in English. Research highlights that spoken language skills are one of the strongest predicators of a child’s future life chances and therefore, one of the best ways for us to close the disadvantage gap is through focussing on Oracy.

Through our work with Voice 21, we also know that Oracy:

• improves confidence and wellbeing
• improves academic outcomes
• improves literacy development
• equips students to thrive in life and beyond school
• enables all pupils to fulfil their potential
• promotes social equity

Our key actions for Oracy 2022-2023

• To continue to use exploratory talk to improve pupil engagement
• To continue to promote and improve vocabulary development across the school
• To ensure our teachers have a strong understanding of what constitutes good oracy and are intentional in their teaching of oracy.
• To ensure that opportunities for oracy are regular, purposeful, appropriately pitched and thoughtfully planned
• To create opportunities for students to reflect on and receive meaningful feedback around their oracy from teachers and peers 
• To ensure that parents and other stakeholders are aware of what our intent is with oracy and understand ways of supporting this work.

What is the intended impact?

This project is a long term, ongoing project that we started in 2021-2022. We envisage that children will become confident and effective communicators, who take an active participatory approach to their lessons. We want all children to be able to use their oracy skills in all areas of the curriculum and later in life.  This will underpin the children’s ability to make a positive contribution and become global citizens.

How are we teaching Oracy at West Town Primary Academy?

We have a multi-layered approach to develop Oracy and are using the 4 domains set out by Voice 21; physical, linguistic, cognitive and social and emotional.  During the first year of our project, we particularly focussed on the social and emotional strand of the Voice 21 Oracy framework ensuring that pupils have developed a good understanding of how to talk to each other including:

• Establishing discussion guidelines
• Fine-tuning our expectations for talk partners
• Learning how to listen to each other.

In the early years, a high focus is given to establishing the same set of expectations particularly around listening and attuning to the speaker.  It essential that all domains are developed effectively as they progress through our school.

Teachers plan regular and purposeful opportunities which enable children to take part in exploratory talk and listen carefully to one another. Subject-specific language, which is a developmental focus in 2022-2023, is used across all areas of the curriculum to support children’s development. Teachers and adults in school model effective talk and listening skills. We use a storytelling schools and Talk for Writing approach in English.

In lessons this might look like:

• Talk partner work including talk tasks
• Discussion tasks
• Use of ‘My turn, your turn’
• Clear vocabulary identified in all lessons with definitions taught
• Use of sentence stems
• Vocabulary and sentence stems displayed and referred to on working walls.
• Staff modelling and repeating expected sentence structures
• Role play and drama tasks
• Visual aids

Opportunities that we are currently experimenting with are:

• Voice 21 collaboration- we currently have 3 Oracy champions within school and a further 2 leaders undertaking training in 2022-2023
• Providing staff with training and the development of subject knowledge and research via our Oracy Champions and the Voice 21 Exchange
• Whole Education lab classrooms project undertaken by 2 senior leaders in 2021-2022
• Vocabulary explicitly taught in almost all lessons
• Vocabulary and sentence stems added to working walls
• Weekly oracy opportunities to discuss at home via the newsletter
• Daily opportunities for talk partners and other types of oracy groupings
• Using the Talk Tactics to develop pupils roles within discussion
• Team teaching and coaching to develop staff practice
• Methods for assessing and feeding back on pupil progress with Oracy