Oracy

At our Catholic primary school, oracy is at the heart of learning and reflects our values of respect, confidence, and valuing every voice. We believe that spoken language is essential for children to grow academically, socially and spiritually. Oracy underpins not only our English curriculum but our whole curriculum, enabling pupils to think deeply, express ideas clearly and listen thoughtfully to others.

This approach is embedded across all subject areas, including mathematics, where children are encouraged to use and understand key vocabulary through strategies such as Vocabulary Vulture. By developing speaking and listening skills in every lesson, we help children build confidence, deepen understanding and communicate effectively. These are lifelong skills that will support them not only in school, but throughout their everyday lives and future journeys.

As a school we have worked diligently to ensure that we have relevant and up to date pedagogy regarding oracy to ensure we have up to date practices. This has meant exploring each strand of oracy: physical, linguistic, cognitive and social and emotional. 

To support the advancement of our children's oracy development, we have employed a number of strategies, such as discussion guidelines for each class to use, discussion prompts which help to scaffold purposeful talk for the children within their classroom and even a word of the week for the children to expand their language skills.

Below are a number of our oracy documents which we have used to develop our whole school approach.