Oracy

Developing ‘real-life’ oracy skills
Pip Bailey, a year 1 teacher at Green Lane Primary School,
explains that with her year 1 pupils “we’ll do role-plays
of being in shops, having dinner, asking for food.” These
activities help the pupils practice ‘everyday’ language.
Pip believes pupils improve their communication and
interaction skills as a result.
Discussion and the Harkness method
Vicki Barsby teaches English in a secondary school, and
regularly initiates a range of activities that involve different
types of talk. She says this helps avoid an atmosphere
of “guess what’s in the teacher’s head”, something she
believes can constrain pupils’ ability to explore topics in
depth. She explains:
“I do a lot of discussion. I start the
lesson, if not individual sections, with a
question, and I’m a big fan of mind maps.
So a question generates loads and loads
of ideas, and then talking about which
are the best ones and why”
Vicki Barsby, English teacher, Highbury Grove School
She also uses the Harkness method, a technique
whereby pupils sit in a circle to discuss a particular
issue or topic. The goal can be to reach a particular
conclusion, or simply to extend pupils’ depth of
understanding through dialogue. Pupils question one
another in order to unpick ideas.
Scaffolding day-today
and ‘one-off’ oracy
activities
Kate Pretsell is the Head of English
at Ark Burlington Danes Academy.
She scaffolds pupils’ talk both in her
day-to-day lessons, and in ‘one-off’
activities.
Each pupil in Kate’s class has a
laminated place mat on their table
outlining possible verbal sentence
starters (see image). Kate says her
pupils “need to be prompted to
use them but they are beginning to
internalise them.”
Kate also carefully scaffolds debating
activities. She works through the
structure of the debate with the pupils,
and also asks them to agree shared
rules for the activity in advance. Pupils
prepare their ideas in advance so that
they do not need to produce their core
arguments on the spot. By helping
students prepare in this manner, Kate
says, they are much more able to
participate meaningfully during the
debate itself.
The teacher’s input during the discussion itself can
be minimal, but the activity can be scaffolded by, for
example:
• Allocating pupils particular positions (for or against
an argument) or roles (chair, note-taker)
• Discussing ground rules for talk beforehand
• Providing discussion sentence starters
• Asking pupils to prepare their ideas in advance
Vicki said the activity has worked well with a range
of groups, and “brilliantly” with a year 7 class,
increasing their engagement and reducing their
reliance on her for prompts
47