At Welford, we want all of our children to be effective communicators, who are able to find their voice and are confident in using it - see our vision for oracy at Welford.

Therefore, over the past few years we have worked with a national oracy education charity - Voice 21 - to develop children's spoken communication (oracy) skills throughout our curriculum, which is helping turn our classrooms into oracy-rich environments where children learn through talk and to talk.

We firmly believe that not only reading and writing but all our subjects float on a sea of high quality talk. Therefore, all year groups plan for meaningful opportunities for our children to develop their oracy skills throughout the year. Talk is planned, modelled, scaffolded and structured to provide opportunities for all of our children to learn the skills needed to communicate aloud effectively.  This deliberate, explicit and systematic teaching of listening and speaking across school, and throughout the curriculum, supports children to make progress in the four strands of oracy which enable them to become successful and skilled communicators. :

• physical skills
• linguistic skills
• cognitive skills
• social and emotional skills 

Yet the benefits of oracy skills go far beyond raising academic achievement and boosting employability, they have been seen to develop a whole range of social, emotional, and interpersonal skills, including self-confidence, self-awareness, resilience, and empathy. We have already seen this at Welford, as by raising the profile of oracy we have seen our children improve their confidence in communicating effectively with one another, expressing their opinion, disagreeing respectfully, and participating in discussions both verbally and non-verbally. 

Oracy in lessons

All our children are expected to talk in every  lesson and teachers provide resources and scaffolds to help them do this effectively. We learn through talking in all subjects and become better at reading, writing, maths and all our other subjects because we regularly discuss our learning. Children are helped with talking sentence stems as well as our talking roles - instigator, clarifier, prober, challenger, builder and summariser. We talk in pairs, trios and small groups throughout the day, and learn to become as skilful at listening as we are at talking. 

Oracy in assemblies

This year we have instituted oracy assemblies as a central part of our key stage 2 assembly programme. In these assemblies we sit in horseshoes, so we can discuss in small groups or talk to the whole group easily. These assemblies are an extended time to discuss, debate and converse, and - as much as possible - children do the talking. We focus on a particular theme (usually one introduced on a Monday morning key stage assembly) or stimulus, which could be a short story, a video or a philosophical idea. We then talk in pairs, quads and as a whole group, developing our speaking skills in front of an audience. 

In the Early Years and Key Stage 1, we are also in the process of developing oracy circles where our younger children get to practise these same skills within a classroom context.

Oracy beyond the classroom

One of the next key steps in our oracy journey is developing children's use of oracy beyond the classroom, so be on the look out for our children increasingly using their talking and listening skills at playtimes, in the lunch hall, in workshops and at events like parent/carer progress meetings. You might even see some family oracy homework appearing in the school newsletter in the months ahead!