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. 

Experience with Voice 21

Selborne Primary School  teamed up with a charity called Voice 21 for three years. It provided our staff with research-based training to better all pupils' oracy skills. We continue to implement their strategies. 

They 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 

Read the Voice21 Impact Report 2015–2025

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 To begin the year, the EYFS team has placed a strong emphasis on developing children’s communication and language skills. Through carefully chosen stimuli and engaging, hands-on objects, children have been encouraged to share their thoughts, express their ideas and engage in meaningful discussions. Teachers have also been modelling rich and varied language throughout interactions, providing opportunities for children to listen, repeat, respond and extend their own use of vocabulary and sentence structure. This approach has laid a strong foundation for oracy, which children will continue to develop and build upon throughout each half term.
Year 1 As part of our geography learning, the children explored different maps, including of our local area. They took turns explaining what was similar about the maps and then what was different. The children then summarised what they discussed with their partner.
	Year 2  Year 2 pupils have been speaking like mathematicians whilst noticing similarities and differences when studying place value.
Year 3 In this Year 3 oracy lesson, children used conscience alley to weigh up the pros and cons for Macbeth and his decision to kill King Duncan.
	Year 4 In Year 4, we focused on turn-taking, social emotional regulation and managing voice levels during a Science lesson. The children worked in groups to make non-Newtonian slime, following instruction cards together.
Year 5  In this history unit, Year 5 pupils researched the major landmarks on Ancient Greece (the Acropolis, temple of Zeus etc) and then used their learning to create adverts in small groups to persuade people to visit Greece.
	Year 6  This half term in Year 6, our science topic is 'Electricity'. Children have been refreshing their knowledge of how to create a circuit and learnt about the benefits of having series and parallel circuits. In this lesson, pupils worked together to create different types of circuit and then removed specific components to see whether or not the electricity still flowed or if bulbs burned brighter. Pupils discussed their predictions beforehand in groups and later compared and analysed results as a class. The topic has linked in perfectly with their DT project, which involves creating a burglar alarm to alert the teachers that someone has been in the class when they shouldn't be.
Oracy in our ARP The pupils were learning to greet the shopkeeper and request items in a real life situation.