What is Oracy?

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding

and engage with others through spoken language.

Oracy develops students' confidence articulacy and capacity to learn. (Voice 21)

Oracy is...

• Engaging with others ideas
• Reasoning together
• Listening to understand
• Changing people's minds
• Telling compelling stories
• Developing arguments 
• Expressing yourself
• Speaking up for what you believe in

Our vision for Oracy

At Colerne Church of England Primary School we are working hard to provide a high quality oracy education. With oracy at the heart of our curriculum, we are committed to building and embedding a culture of communication through talk. Purposeful talk is used to drive forward learning, through talk in the classroom, which has been planned, designed, modelled, scaffolded and structured to enable all learners to develop the skills needed to talk effectively and with confidence. The deliberate, explicit and systematic teaching of oracy across phases and throughout the curriculum will support children to make progress in the four strands of oracy.

We want every child at Colerne Church of England Primary School to become shining lights in their lives and find their voice. Oracy develops pupils' confidence, articulacy and capacity to learn. Providing a high quality oracy education empowers students, regardless of their background, to greater success in school and in life. Effective communication skills are needed for students to succeed and become leading lights in later life. We are a partner in the Wiltshire Talks Whole School Oracy Project which supports us to create an oracy embedded curriculum and enable pupils to develop speaking and listening skills.

Oracy toolkit

Oracy across the Curriculum 

Our school curriculum is rich in oracy opportunities:

• EYFS is the start of our pupils’ oracy journey through school. Staff encourage oracy from an early age through talking stories, retelling stories, scaffolding conversations during free flow time and circle time class discussions. Any barriers to oracy are spotted and acted upon here and interventions to assist with speech are put in place. Communication in Early years is a prime learning area and enables children to meet other milestones at the end of the foundation stage.
• At Colerne Church of England Primary School oracy is at the heart of feedback and assessment for learning enabling children to discuss their work and any misconceptions. Teachers challenge children through probing questions about their learning. 
• Maths- During maths lessons children have opportunities to discuss their learning, knowledge and reasoning. Children are able to enquire about their learning through maths talk and daily number sense starter activities.
• Writing- In English lessons our children engage with talk for writing to develop vocabulary and presentational talk. 
• Reading- In reading children experience whole class and group reading opportunities, where they have to explain and provide evidence for their answers based on a text. They are able to present their answer to the class as their audience. Texts are discussed during reading lessons (vocabulary and comprehension) which are taught explicitly.
• PSHE- the children all follow Jigsaw, which has language, conversation, listening and understanding all embedded in the curriculum.
• Computing- across the school, children are given opportunities in Computing to present what they have learnt in computing. For example, presenting Google slides to coding robots. Also sharing their knowledge with peers on how to complete a task.
• PE- Children actively engage with peer feedback and are encouraged to evaluate each lesson.
• Science- Scientific literacy is being developed through immersive experiences and children are encouraged to question their own predictions and results of experiments. The national curriculum for science reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Through lessons children learn scientific vocabulary and the ability to articulate scientific concepts clearly and precisely. The working scientifically objectives enable children to develop Oracy skills.
• RE- oracy is seen throughout every sesson of RE and each Collective Worship opportunity. The children are encouraged to challenge and suggest ideas to a very high level 
• Pupil voice- At Colerne Church of England Primary School we have four whole school councils where members, along with teaching staff, regularly attend meetings to listen, respect and act upon the views of the children. Children also have opportunities to discuss their learning with curriculum leaders through pupil voice sessions.