Oracy

Intent - What does Oracy look like at Sandcross?

At Sandcross, our aim in spoken language is to provide a sound foundation for the development of oracy skills from debate to poetry and verbal feedback to talk for presentational purposes. At the heart of good oracy is a dialogic classroom. Our classrooms are rich in talk, from effective questioning to constructive peer discussions and teachers use talk skillfully to develop and encourage critical thinking. There is a clear understanding in school of how talk aids teaching, analysis and higher order metacognition. Oracy is viewed as a driver of change and we believe that it is imperative for literacy to function as a tripartite structure of oracy, reading and writing. 

Our oracy curriculum will enable children to:

• speak with confidence, clarity and eloquence;
• recognise the importance of listening in conjunction with speaking,
• be confident in the value of their own opinions and to be able to express and justify them to others;
• adapt their use of language for a range of different purposes and audiences,
• sustain a logical argument, question, reason and respond to others appropriately;
• concentrate, interpret and respond appropriately to a wide range of immersive experiences;
• be open-minded, to respect the contribution of others and to take account of their views;
• celebrate the diversity of languages, dialects and accents in the school and appreciate the experience and value the contributions of children with a wide variety of linguistic abilities;
• share their learning in an engaging, informative way through presentations, recitals, drama, poetry and debate.

Implementation - So, how are we going to deliver this? 

Our school curriculum is rich in oracy opportunities:
Over the last year we have introduced learning questions and through these, children are able to engage in whole class discussions and exploratory group talk to be able to answer these.

Our feedback policy has oracy at the core and the ‘live’ marking process allows children to discuss their work openly with their teacher and peers. They can then act immediately on advice given and this cultivates a sense of collaboration and shared purpose. 

Open ended questioning is used in all lessons to allow all children to think and answer more deeply and to share ideas with their peers. 

Pupil voice- At Sandcross, we have a weekly Pupil Parliament meeting and a team of ambassadors (Y1-Y6). Members of the school community regularly attend meetings to listen, respect and act upon the views of the children.

Children are regularly given the opportunity to use their oracy skills in drama and whole class debates and with regular opportunities to speak out in class.

In EYFS, Communication and Language is a key area in the Early Learning goals. Children in EYFS talk and communicate in a widening range of situations, to respond to adults and each other, to listen carefully and to practise and extend their communication skills. They explore words and texts in a vocabulary rich environment with a new story or traditional tale every day to enjoy, to decode and to read for pleasure.  EYFS also uses a Speech Screener to assess all children's starting points and then put daily interventions into place with rolling groups across nursery and reception as needed.
 
Impact - What difference is this curriculum making to our children? 

The impact oracy has on our children is clear to see. Our children will be confident speakers and will embrace opportunities to speak whether it be in the classroom, in assembly, in front of a panel of governors or in front of parents. The proof of the oracy learning that takes place will be heard in the voices of the children that we teach. It will be heard when listening to them recite a poem, watching them turn-take in a group discussion, felt through the profound questions they ask and the attentiveness with which they listen. 

Summatively, assessing oracy is a challenge that has been recognised nationally. At Sandcross, children are assessed through their ability to communicate effectively and whether this can translate into their written work and do they now have an enhanced bank of vocabulary to draw upon.

These judgements will be quality assured by subject leaders using first-hand evidence of how pupils are doing, drawing together evidence from formative methods like: pupil interviews, observations of tasks, reading tasks, work scrutinies and discussions with pupils about what they have absorbed and retained from the content they have studied. These judgements will inform the curriculum and whether children are ready for the next stage of their education.