Oracy

What is Oracy?

Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop language and engage with others through spoken language. At Chawson First School we believe that developing children's oracy skills is as important as their Numeracy and Literacy skills and that Oracy is interwoven in every aspect of their life both at school and at home.

Why is it important?

Listen to our Oracy ministers talking about why they think Oracy and being articulate is important to them.

Oracy in school

Our journey to realise our school vision of being Articulate begins with our youngest learners in preschool where they practise the important skills of listening and taking turns to speak and listen. From Reception to Year 4 we build on these skills through our progression documents. These allow teachers to introduce groupings, sentence stems and opportunities to talk sequentially. 

Oracy in the classrooms

All classrooms display listening guidelines and sentence stems that the children can use in their independent discussions.

Children are given opportunities to practise their skills with different sized groups such as pairs, trios and small groups. In KS2 they take on different roles in the conversations such as the silent summariser. 

Parent Workshops

We believe that engaging with parents and including them on our Oracy journey is fundamental to making significant changes. We have provided parent workshops to explain Oracy and invited them into the classroom to witness high quality discussions taking place. 

PowerPoints from the presentation are included below

Talk for Ten - Oracy based homework

Each week, on a Monday, we will send out an exciting Talk for Ten conversation starter. These are statements that have been deliberately chosen to be accessible to all ages and yet could also lead to the most interesting deep debates and discussions!

We ask that as a family you dedicate a quality ten minutes each week to have a thorough conversation. You could use the Chawson Oracy sentence stems included to:

· Have a back and forth conversation

· Build on each other’s ideas

· Question each other to gain more information

· Disagree agreeably!

· Add information to make a persuasive argument

Those of you who came to our Oracy workshops will know how important Oracy is, and how it forms the foundation on our teaching and learning here at Chawson. Let’s work together to support children’s Oracy.

Talk for Ten homework now forms the basis of our homework from Reception to Year 4, and Pre-school can join in too. You’ll still receive skills-based homework such as reading, spellings and times tables as these are vital skills too.

Happy Talking!