ORACY

Has Your School Recognised the Importance Yet?

You might be forgiven for thinking oracy is the “new” buzzword, but it has been around since the 1960s. However, it is currently enjoying a well-deserved, renewed focus.

Why is it so important? Because as the educationalist, James Britton, said in 1976: “Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.” In other words, our children need to have strong oracy skills as a foundation for reading and writing. I would add to that – our children need to have strong oracy skills as a foundation for learning. In the Bloom’s Taxonomy, the top level includes evaluating and analysing. This requires a high level of oracy to be able to carry out effectively. Having a large, sophisticated vocabulary, being able to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly, is a necessity to be able to achieve high grades in exams, succeed at interviews and win at life.

The ability to converse meaningfully and eloquently is also highly important for socialising, which in turn helps with mental health. Too many of our children spend time staring at screens rather than playing out where conversation can happen more naturally, therefore we need to make sure we fill that gap in school. When a person is unable to put their point across effectively, they feel undermined, marginalised and unheard. A lack of oracy can cause misunderstandings and frustration, often resulting in arguments or violence, ultimately impacting negatively on the child’s self-esteem.

Most of us know our rights. We know we have the right to be heard, we have the right to voice our opinions. Sadly, that does not necessarily mean that people know how to express that voice. All five of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs involve the person being able to express that need. To be able to explain what is wrong, why they are falling short of the minimum requirements and to be able to ask for help.  

Therefore, for all of the reasons above, oracy is an incredibly important skill to develop. There is some information about oracy interventions on the EEF website: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/oral-language-interventions However, simply inserting oracy as an intervention is not enough. Oracy should be taught explicitly, and it should also become an integral part of teacher pedagogy. Look out for my future blog on how to do this. In the meantime, wherever you currently are in your oracy improvement plan, here are ten fun games you can use to enhance oracy within lessons:

• Power Line: When given a controversial statement, students line up according to how much they agree or disagree with the statement. They must then try to persuade people to join them from the other end. This promotes cognitive and social and emotional oracy skills.

• Swapsy: After the Power Line, teachers select the more able students to swap sides, so they have to think of arguments and reasoning against their own ideas. This helps to stretch and challenge higher ability students.

• Pass the Panda: Only the person holding the panda (or any other soft toy or even a soft ball) can speak. This helps prevent people talking over each other. The person speaking chooses who to pass the ball to. This helps self-regulation and turn-taking.

• Rip it Off: Each student has a small card divided into three. Each time they contribute to the debate they remove one of the sections. This prevents the same person taking over too often. It also encourages and allows quieter students to take part.

• Rocket Ship: When a question is posed, nobody is allowed to talk or put their hands up for 10 seconds. The teacher puts a silent countdown clock on the whiteboard. This allows and promotes thinking time.

• Steal a Stem: Sentence Stems are put in the middle of the table. Students choose which sentence stem they want to use within the discussion. Once a stem is used it is gone from the table. This encourages students to vary and further sophisticate their sentence openers.

• Balloon Debate: Everyone is in a hot air balloon but it is losing height. They need to get rid of weight. They can choose to be themselves or a famous person or a character from a book, play or film. Each person needs to persuade the others that they should be allowed to remain in the balloon and somebody else sacrificed over the side. This promotes cognition and social and emotional oracy.

• Why?: One student in a group explains a fact or an opinion. Another student holds up a card saying “why?” The student needs to explain further or pass on to another student. The aim is to be able to answer as many “why?” questions in a row as possible. This extends thinking, improving cognition.

• Erm… You’re Out: A student has to talk about a topic for two minutes. They cannot say filler words such as “erm”, “err” “um”, nor can they use phrases such as “you know what I mean”. Neither can they not speak for more than two seconds. This improves fluency.

• Sell it to Me: The teacher gives a very boring object to each student on the table except for one who is the purchaser. Each student then has to try to persuade the purchaser to buy their object. The purchaser can only buy one. This contributes to cognitive and social and emotional oracy skills.