Oracy at Selborne

What is oracy?

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. At Selborne, oracy is a powerful tool for learning as it teaches pupils to become effective speakers and listeners as they discuss each subject curriculum. It also empowers them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. Through a high quality oracy education pupils learn through talk and to talk. This is when they develop and deepen their subject knowledge and understanding through talk in the classroom, which has been planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured to enable them to learn the skills needed to talk effectively.

Joining Voice 21

Selborne Primary School has teamed up with a charity called Voice 21. It has provided our staff with research-based training to better all pupils' oracy skills.

They have formed an oracy framework which focuses on four separate strands:

Physical - making yourself heard, using your voice and body as an instrument
Linguistic - knowing which words and phrases to use and using them
Cognitive - the deliberate application of thought to what you are saying
Social and emotional - engaging with the people around you; knowing you have the right to speak

Our Oracy Vision

At Selborne, pupils thrive in oracy by being able to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with all members of our community effectively through spoken language. We aspire for all pupils to learn to talk and to learn through talk with the ultimate goal of ensuring all pupils feel confident and valued.

How you can support your child with oracy

Be a role model - show good listening skills and turn-taking
Discuss the word of the week with your child. Link it to words they already know
Ask your child about their day in school and encourage them to share what they have learnt
Listen to your child read and ask them questions about the text and their opinion
Encourage your child to talk in sentences rather than singular words or phrases. Correct their spoken grammar, e.g. goed (go) or wented (went), has/have, falled (fell), eated (ate)
Discuss and summarise a T.V. programme and ask for their opinion
Reduce screen time and encourage them to play with you or siblings (board games are excellent for this)
Make time for each other! Oracy can be done at any time and anywhere. Sit with your child and talk to them about anything they are interested in.

Click here for the document Helping Your Child Develop Speaking and Listening Skills at Home. It is packed with practical ideas.

Oracy news

Oracy questions at lunchtime

Mr. Matharu, our oracy champion, reminded pupils about our lunchtime question in an assembly in Autumn 2024. Which would you rather visit and why? Our pupils are encouraged to use the sentence stem to discuss this with their teachers and peers at lunchtime whilst eating dinner. Questions are changed on a regular basis.

Reception

This term, Reception children have continued to build on their oracy skills, gradually moving away from using speaking bears to initiate partner talk and take turns fairly. Children have even begun to use ‘nesting’, allowing them to think aloud before sharing their responses with the rest of the class.

Year 1

Year 1 participated in a whole-school Geography competition celebrating the National Geographic Magazine. They worked in their houses, taking turns and listening to each other, to find locations of magazine covers on a map.

Year 2

As part of their English learning, Year 2 used the oracy strategy 'conscience alley' to discuss a dilemma. The pupils had read the book Little Red in which they came face to face with the 'last wolf in the land'. This photo shows the pupils deciding whether they would help the wolf or not.

Year 3

Year 3 demonstrated and explained fossil formation in this lesson like the true paleontologist that they are.

They found the final steps a little hard to explain but we got there in the end!

Year 4

In English, Year 4 have been reading Winter's Child, and one of the lessons focused on the importance of characterisation. Through speaking and listening activities, pupils explored the importance of understanding a character's perspective, which allowed them to gain a better insight into their thoughts and feelings.

The children particularly enjoyed role-playing as the different main characters from the story, working on their expression and intonation.

Year 5

In Year 5, pupils completed a case study based on the earthquake in Nepal in 2015. Pupils looked at a range of sources including eye witness accounts, newspaper articles, photographs and websites to learn about what happened in Nepal. During the following lesson, they were told that a school was to be rebuilt in the same location as the devastating earthquake. Pupils were put into 6 groups (parents of the school pupils, the children, the education board, the environmental agency and the construction company) and had to remain in character whilst debating whether or not the school should be opened on a plate boundary.

Year 6

This half term, Year 6 have been studying the lives of Ancient Egyptians. For their end of unit assessment, their task was to read and annotate a set of instructions and understand how bodies were mummified in Ancient Egypt. Following this, they discussed how these instructions could then be applied to mummifying a tomato. With a set of tools and a tomato (which acted as a body), they worked together to follow each step and mummify the tomato

Oracy in our ARP

The pupils were learning to greet the shopkeeper and request items in a real life situation.

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