Oracy

In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. It is also a route to social mobility, empowering all students, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life. (Voice 21)

We are working with Voice 21 to develop the children's Oracy skills to enhance their speaking and listening.

Over the last two years we have participated in many different activities and games to improve active listening, parental engagement, and discussions.

The benefits of Oracy skills go far beyond academic achievement and employability however, they boost a whole range of social, emotional, and interpersonal skills, including self-confidence, self-awareness, resilience, and empathy.

Oracy is enabling children in our school to improve their confidence in communicating effectively with one another, expressing their opinion, and participating in discussions both verbally and non-verbally.

The deliberate, explicit and systematic teaching of oracy across phases and throughout the curriculum will support children and young people to make progress in the four strands of oracy outlined in the Oracy Framework.

The Oracy Framework can be used as a basis of formative assessment, enabling you to gauge what your students have or have not yet grasped and informing you what to teach next.

We are embedding sentence stems in our planning across the curriculum to help scaffold class discussions whilst also ensuring that children of all abilities can access the learning. It is also beginning to have an impact on children's writing because children are applying the sentence stems within their writing.

Talk on Tuesday Assemblies

On Tuesdays we have a 'Talk assembly' where we discuss, question, collaborate and engage with each other on various topics.

At St. Aidan's we teach oracy explicitly and create talk-rich classrooms supported by skilled teachers building high quality dialogue and thinking. We set high expectations for our students as orators and expose them to a wide variety of contexts for speaking in front of each other across every aspect of the curriculum.

Our talk assemblies are part of our whole school oracy culture.