Oracy
Intent, Implementation and Impact statement
Intent
At Moor Row Primary School we know language development is an area of key importance to our pupils. In Moor Row Primary School children learn through talk and learn how to talk to a high standard. We have high expectations of children through 3 key strands – Participation, Elaboration and Challenge. We use this as our driving force to improve children’s spoken language and vocabulary which has a positive impact on all wider subjects.
At Moor Row we believe that Oracy is the fundamental key to achieve success. Some of our pupils start early school life without the Oracy skills relevant for their age. We strive to develop their spoken language skills through our Oracy based curriculum, talk partners and the ethos of our staff. At Moor Row we hold high expectations of spoken language and children’s listening skills which is upheld by the whole school community.
Oracy is embedded in all year groups and all children are exposed to talk rich environments. We aim to give children their own voice as we believe this is vital for their future success. We strive for all children to be confident to express their own opinion and challenge ideas in a respectful and supportive environment. We see Oracy as part of the school’s pedagogy, not a stand-alone lesson or subject and we expect it to be threaded through the daily school life. By the time children leave Moor Row, our hope is that they can speak clearly to a variety of audiences, to articulate and express their thoughts and ideas and conduct and participate in respectful discussions.
Implementation
The national curriculum for English reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. Spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing. Continuous professional development has helped our drive to embed Oracy across the curriculum and create staff who are confident to maximise Oracy opportunities within their classrooms. Oracy is threaded through all planning, grouping strategies are included to try to encourage varied use, along with a wide range of strategies, discussions and oracy teaching sequences. This is helping to maintain our drive for oracy and ensure teachers are not reliant upon one strategy.
Children are immersed in talk rich environment, this is evident in the displays around each classroom. Our talk rich classrooms display sentence starters and ideas for discussion. Children are guided to use all of these to reflect upon theirs and their peers Oracy skills. Teachers maximise Oracy opportunities in every lessons, by using: discussion, talk partners, oracy sequence, performance, talk detectives and many other strategies. As oracy is part of the daily life in school children know what to do, the culture of respect within our dialogic classrooms and are fully involved.
Impact
We have found that when children explore learning through various oracy strategies and are exposed to new vocabulary they better retain this knowledge. This leads to learning becoming memorable and engrained. Meaning when children are presenting or writing, the language they use are of a higher level with a deeper understanding. Our ratio of pupils to teacher talk weighs heavily on pupils’ side with children expected to engage and have their voices heard. Learning in classroom is pupil to pupil not teacher dictated. The children show that they can speak clearly to different audiences using high level vocabulary during assemblies, presentations and when outside of the school grounds on educational visits.
At Moor Row these four areas for Oracy will be taught explicitly through discussion, talk partners, presentations, assemblies and one to one reading opportunities.