Our Approach to Oracy at St Luke's

Intent

At St Luke's C of E Primary School, we believe that oracy is a social and moral imperative. The ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage meaningfully with others through spoken language should not be determined by a child's background, confidence or prior language experience. Every child deserves a rich language experience and the opportunity to develop a voice which is heard, understood and valued.

Our school vision, Work Together, Grow Together, FLOURISH Together, is lived through talk. We work together when we listen, question, build upon ideas and learn to disagree respectfully. We grow together when talk helps us to rehearse new vocabulary, connect prior knowledge, reason, challenge assumptions and refine our thinking. We FLOURISH together when pupils develop the confidence, language and interpersonal skills to participate fully in their learning, their relationships and the wider world.

We recognise that some pupils arrive at school with extensive experience of conversation, explanation, debate and a rich vocabulary, while others may have had fewer opportunities to develop these forms of spoken language. Simply providing opportunities to "talk to your partner" is not enough. If pupils are to become increasingly articulate, thoughtful and effective communicators, the knowledge and skills of effective talk must be explicitly taught, deliberately modelled, carefully rehearsed and progressively developed.

Our oracy curriculum is therefore designed to enable pupils to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. Drawing upon the Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive and Social & Emotional domains of oracy, pupils progressively learn not simply to speak more, but to speak, listen and interact with increasing purpose, precision and independence.

We recognise the close relationship between language and thought. Reasoning and critical thinking are developed through talk as pupils explain ideas, hear alternative perspectives, justify choices, test assumptions, make connections and refine their thinking in response to others. Through purposeful classroom dialogue, pupils learn that their first idea does not always have to be their final idea.

Oracy also supports pupils' social and emotional development. Effective communication enables pupils to listen actively, interpret the contributions of others, express disagreement appropriately, clarify misunderstanding and resolve differences through language. We want pupils to understand that successful relationships are built not only upon having something to say, but upon knowing how to listen, how to respond and how to communicate when perspectives differ.

Our intention is that every pupil leaves St Luke's able to use their voice thoughtfully and confidently: to explain, reason, question, challenge, persuade, present, collaborate and listen.

Implementation

Oracy is implemented through a deliberately sequenced whole-school curriculum from EYFS to Year 6. Progression is structured through the four interconnected domains of Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive and Social & Emotional oracy, ensuring that pupils systematically develop the knowledge, language and behaviours required for effective spoken communication.

We have deliberately avoided an approach in which every aspect of oracy is expected to be taught simultaneously. Instead, each year group's progression is broken into manageable, termly priorities. This allows teachers to hone, model and revisit specific oracy skills over time, building from speaking audibly, wondering aloud and taking turns in Reception to evaluating evidence, sustaining lines of reasoning, responding to alternative perspectives and influencing an audience in Year 6. The progression evident within the curriculum is therefore cumulative rather than a series of disconnected speaking activities.

Across each academic year, pupils encounter twelve deliberately planned curriculum opportunities for focused oracy development: through English and writing, history, geography and science. Across seven years at St Luke's, this creates a sustained entitlement to 84 carefully planned opportunities in which pupils explicitly learn, rehearse and apply increasingly sophisticated oracy skills through rich curriculum content.

These opportunities are not additional or detached "oracy lessons". Oracy is taught through the curriculum pupils are already learning. Children may develop expressive tone through the diary of Samuel Pepys, use precise geographical vocabulary to describe Shireoaks, probe scientific reasoning about the function of teeth, explore contrasting perspectives through heliocentric and geocentric models, or sustain a balanced discussion about the impact of multinational companies. The curriculum content gives pupils something meaningful to think and talk about; the oracy curriculum teaches them how to communicate and develop that thinking effectively.

Teachers explicitly identify the oracy move being taught. They model the language and behaviours of effective talk using the actual curriculum content, rather than relying upon generic discussion activities. Pupils hear and compare examples of more and less effective spoken communication and are taught to notice the impact of volume, pace, gesture, vocabulary, phrasing, evidence, questioning, listening and interaction.

Carefully selected sentence stems provide temporary linguistic scaffolds. Teachers foreground approximately two to four stems which are directly relevant to the oracy skill and curriculum task. These make the structures of effective talk visible and accessible. Pupils orally rehearse the language before applying it within genuine explanation, reasoning, discussion or presentation.

Sentence stems are not the intended outcome of our oracy curriculum. They are a means of providing pupils with the language architecture for increasingly sophisticated thought and communication. As pupils become more fluent, teachers deliberately reduce the scaffold. Over time, pupils are expected to internalise these structures and independently select language appropriate to the context, audience and purpose.

Our shared teaching approach is:

Name the move. Model the language. Rehearse the talk. Apply the thinking. Reduce the scaffold.

Teachers explicitly notice and narrate effective oracy. Rather than relying upon general praise such as "good speaking" or "good listening", adults identify the precise skill demonstrated: a pupil may have built upon another person's contribution, selected more precise disciplinary vocabulary, justified an idea using evidence, invited an unheard voice into a discussion or deliberately altered their pace to influence an audience.

Oracy is also used deliberately as a tool for learning. Pupils orally rehearse vocabulary and sentence structures; retrieve and connect prior knowledge; explain mathematical and scientific reasoning; explore historical and geographical perspectives; question, clarify and challenge ideas; and orally compose and refine ideas before writing. In this way, pupils learn both the skills of effective talk and how to use talk to deepen their own thinking and learning.

Implementation is underpinned by the belief that participation must be deliberately supported. Classroom dialogue should not be dominated by the most confident or verbally fluent pupils. Teachers use modelling, structured rehearsal, carefully selected stems and purposeful discussion routines to enable all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, pupils with SEND and those who may be less confident contributors, to participate meaningfully.

Impact

The intended impact of our oracy curriculum is that pupils become increasingly articulate, thoughtful and independent speakers and listeners who use spoken language purposefully to think, learn, communicate and participate.

As pupils progress through St Luke's, we expect to see increasing sophistication across all four domains of oracy. Pupils will speak with increasing control of volume, pace, tone, gesture and physical presence. They will select precise and increasingly disciplinary vocabulary and adapt their language according to audience and purpose. They will organise and connect ideas, reason from evidence, ask purposeful questions, explore alternative perspectives and critically evaluate their own thinking. They will listen actively, build upon the contributions of others, challenge ideas respectfully and take increasing responsibility for the quality and direction of group talk.

We want pupils to recognise that talk is a tool for thinking. They should increasingly use spoken language to test an idea, make a connection, retrieve prior knowledge, identify a misconception and reconsider an initial viewpoint. Through high-quality dialogue, pupils will become more comfortable with intellectual uncertainty and understand that changing an opinion in response to stronger evidence is a sign of thoughtful learning.

Over time, pupils' reliance upon teacher-provided sentence stems will reduce. The impact of the curriculum will not be measured by how frequently children repeat a displayed stem, but by whether they increasingly internalise the language patterns and behaviours of effective communication and apply them independently in new contexts.

We expect the development of oracy to strengthen learning across the curriculum. Pupils' explanations will become more precise; mathematical and scientific reasoning more explicit; use of subject-specific vocabulary more secure; discussion of historical and geographical perspectives more nuanced; and oral rehearsal increasingly supportive of coherent, purposeful writing.

We also expect oracy to have a wider impact upon pupils' relationships and participation in school life. Pupils will be better equipped to express needs and opinions, listen to others, clarify misunderstandings and navigate disagreement without immediately resorting to conflict. They will understand that their voice carries both opportunity and responsibility: the opportunity to contribute and influence, and the responsibility to listen, consider and respond with respect.

Ultimately, our ambition is that pupils leave St Luke's having experienced a rich language curriculum in which their voice has been deliberately developed over seven years. Through 84 carefully planned curriculum opportunities, alongside the everyday culture of talk across our school, we want pupils to possess the language, confidence and thinking skills required to participate fully in education and society.

At St Luke's, we Work Together through dialogue and listening. We Grow Together by questioning, reasoning and learning from the ideas of others. We FLOURISH Together when every child has the language, confidence and opportunity to find their voice and use it well.

12 planned opportunities each year.
7 years of progressive development.
84 opportunities to explicitly teach pupils how to use their voice.

We do not leave oracy to chance.