Oracy

Oracy at Cobbs Brow

What is oracy?

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 is not only foundational to reading and writing but also acts as a lever for social mobility, enabling children to access opportunities and succeed in all areas of life. We are committed to ensuring that all children, regardless of background, have the chance to develop strong speech, language, and communication skills.

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.

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.

We deliver a structured and dynamic approach to developing oracy skills across all year groups. Our strategy includes:

1. Embedding Oracy Across the Curriculum: Oracy is implicit in every subject, ensuring children have frequent opportunities to speak, listen, and engage in dialogue. From class discussions in English to presenting ideas in science and debating in history, speaking and listening skills are consistently reinforced.
2. High-Quality Teacher Modelling: Teachers model effective speaking and listening behaviours, demonstrating clear articulation, active listening, and respectful conversation techniques.
3. Language-Rich Environments: Our classrooms are designed to be language-rich, featuring displays of key vocabulary, sentence starters, and question prompts to support children in using a wide range of language structures.
4. Targeted Support for Vulnerable Learners: Recognising the importance of equity, we provide tailored support for children with additional needs, including those with speech, language, and communication difficulties. This includes specific interventions delivered by trained staff, such as Speech and Language Therapists or teaching assistants with specialist training.
5. Celebrating Oracy: We foster a culture where oracy is celebrated through events such as showcase assemblies, debating events, and opportunities for children to present their learning to parents and peers.

Through talk in the classroom, which has been planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured this will enable our children to develop and deepen their subject knowledge and understanding.

Our children participate in a wide variety of planned oracy activities across the curriculum every day. This could be seen in class as:

• Partner talk
• Group discussion
• Problem solving
• Debate
• Role play/Drama
• Presentations
• Use of STEM sentences
• Opportunities to learn and use subject specific vocabulary.

We ensure we provide a wide range of opportunities for children to develop their oracy skills outside of the curriculum.

We do this through:

• Assemblies
• Election speeches for important roles in school such as: School Council, Sports Leaders, Well-Being Warriors etc.
• Class/Year group Productions
• Meet and greet with Governors and visitors
• Reading buddies
• Subject/themed events

Oracy is a powerful tool for learning; at Cobbs Brow Primary School we aim to encourage fluent speakers, who are confident to communicate, debate and present in a wide range of situations.  Through Oracy, we empower our children to better understand themselves and the world around them.

Celebrating Excellence in Oracy – SHARES Oracy Award

Cobbs Brow School has signed up to the SHARES Lancashire Oracy Award. To achieve this award schools must demonstrate how oracy is explicitly taught, practised, and embedded across the curriculum at each phase using the four oracy strands: Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive, and Social & Emotional. There are 3 awards available: gold, silver and bronze.

To further support school, SHARES are providing a series of CPD for staff and have created opportunities for children to demonstrate ‘oracy’ in action through public speaking events, debates and poetry events.