Oracy
Oracy
Vision
Excellence achieved through care, creativity and challenge.
Intent
We want all pupils to be successful in life by achieving their potential. From Nursery through to Year 6, we aim to give pupils the tools and skills they need to positively thrive in society. We want our pupils to have high aspirations and to know that they are able to take a path in life of their choosing.
One way in which we promote this is by explicitly modelling and teaching speaking and listening skills and giving pupils plenty of opportunities to practise speaking for a variety of different purposes and audiences. Voice 21, a charity which supports schools to build speaking and listening skills into the curriculum, explains that when they leave school, “children with poor verbal communication skills are less likely to find employment and more likely to suffer from mental health difficulties” (Voice 21, 2024), thereby potentially exacerbating the inequalities already existing in society. They also found that “students receiving free school meals are twice as likely to be below the expected language standard at age 11” (Voice 21, 2024). In our context, which has approximately 40% of pupils receiving free school meals, the need for high-quality teaching of oracy (speaking and listening skills) is evidently essential for giving our pupils the best chance to succeed in life.
Implementation
Teachers use the purple threads to plan which have been adapted from the National Curriculum to ensure pupils cover all the skills during their time at King’s Hedges to be effective communicators.
At King’s Hedges, we have developed a consistent and high-quality approach to teaching oracy skills by implementing our Communications Project, which began in the academic year 2023-24. The project is designed to give each year group, from Nursery through to Year 6, a clear focus for developing and promoting age-appropriate speaking and listening skills. For example, in Nursery, pupils learn songs linked to their curriculum and perform these to parents and carers at the end of term. In Year 5, pupils lead Friday assemblies for the entire summer term, sharing with the rest of the school an inspirational figure. Pupil voice gathered after these projects has been overwhelmingly positive, with all pupils saying they felt proud of their achievements and that they would like the opportunity to continue practising their oracy skills in the future. This ongoing reflection helps to inform the next steps for our project. As well as during our Communications Project, oracy skills are also embedded within the wider context of our curriculum and staff use every opportunity to model communication skills effectively for a range of purposes and audiences.
The Communications Project continues to be embedded within all year groups using their theme learning as a stimulus for their projects to give meaningful opportunities to practise their oracy skills. Our tagline for the projects – Prepare, Practise, Present – ensures that practise is at the heart of the process and means pupils are able to receive meaningful feedback from peers and adults before their final presentations. Staff are encouraged to build on the previous year group’s KPIs and use their assessment of the pupils to inform future oracy opportunities.
Staff are expected to model effective speaking and listening skills at every opportunity and reward pupils when they demonstrate these skills across the curriculum. The development of pupils’ vocabulary skills is key and children are challenged to upstage their spoken vocabulary at all times.
Impact
By the time pupils leave King’s Hedges, they will feel confident speaking for a range of different purposes and audiences. They will be able to identify key speaking and listening skills and execute these effectively to achieve a given purpose. Pupils will have transferable skills that will help to support them in secondary school and beyond. Pupils have the chance to apply for a role as a School Messenger to gather and deliver messages in assemblies, which provides further opportunities to practise their speaking and listening skills in a meaningful way.
