Oracy

At Bedgrove Junior School, our aim is for all children to be inspired to communicate in different ways and for different purposes. This involves being able to respond to social cues and act in a respectful way whilst engaging in meaningful and purposeful discussions. Children are challenged to think critically in order to succeed, preparing themselves for a future in a fast-moving, diverse world.

As a school, we are embedding oracy to be at the heart of the curriculum as research shows that critical thinking and a deeper understanding are driven by this. Good opportunities for oracy are planned, modelled and scaffolded in order to develop thinking. This allows children to learn from each other, develop their ideas, have a better understanding of social cues and grow in confidence. As well as evaluate their own and their peers’ contributions against the framework, consciously understanding their role as listener as well as a speaker.

The oracy framework is broken down into 4 distinct strands – physical, cognitive, linguistic and social and emotional. We ensure that all of our teachers are equipped and feel confident to promote oracy in their classroom; to scaffold learning enabling children to become confident speakers and listeners. Within the classroom, we use a variety of strategies and resources to promote a culture for oracy including setting oracy guidelines with our classes based on the framework.

Our oracy curriculum will allow children to…

• Actively engage in lessons.
• Use oracy to develop their learning.
• Talk for different purposes and understand social cues.
• Talk about how they use oracy in the classroom and choose the most appropriate role in talk.
• Feel more confident to engage in discussions within the classroom.
• Show they are listening to those speaking.
• Adapt their talk based on their audience (exploratory and presentational talk).
• Evaluate their contributions using the oracy framework.  
• Acquire a wide vocabulary.

The National Curriculum outlines the importance of oracy, using discussion in order to learn, elaborate and explain their understanding and ideas clearly whilst adapting their talk through tone of voice, formality, audience and purpose (presentational talk).