Oracy

Yet the school does not believe oracy
always needs to be taught discretely.
After year 7 it is embedded throughout
the curriculum and at primary level, since
class teachers work with the same pupils
everyday, it is seen simply part of
day-to-day practice:
“In terms of creating a culture of talk in the classroom
it’s a lot easier for a primary school teacher because
you’ve got the same pupils all day so you can set up
certain routines and practices that you can use across
every single lesson”
Amy Gaunt, Head of Oracy Primary
Peter Hyman, the
headteacher does not
believe that teaching
oracy discretely
and embedding
it throughout the
curriculum are mutually
exclusive. He explains,
though, that teaching
oracy separately
can help it spread
throughout a school:
“One of the challenges for oracy … is that people think that because we speak we’re doing it
anyway, and the thinking behind having a separate curriculum is that you do need structures
that give it a boost and make teachers focus on it explicitly, and make students think … we
are treating with the same status and recognition that you would with reading and writing”
“We’re quite aware that as soon as anything is discrete the danger is that it doesn’t then
transfer. People think, ‘I’ve done my speaking, I don’t need to use those same skills
elsewhere’, but of course if you do it skilfully then they do transfer…. The single biggest way
of doing that is using common language, so we’re using the four strands of oracy and every
teacher’s aware of them, so every teacher can then be referring to them”
“A discrete curriculum should be seen as a sort of pump priming…. If you had a discrete
grammar lesson in English where you’re teaching systematically how to use an apostrophe
you’d expect that to be seen in a history lesson”
Peter Hyman, Executive Headteacher
Introducing a discrete curriculum for oracy
Chorlton High School in Manchester has introduced a discrete oracy curriculum for its year 7 cohort at
the start of the 2016/17 academic year as part of its involvement with the EEF-funded trial of the Voice
21 and University of Cambridge Oracy Framework. The Oracy Framework contains four elements, of
which the discrete curriculum is one part. The four elements are:
• An oracy curriculum, which includes dedicated oracy lessonsand body language
• Strategies for building oracy into every lesson
• Strategies for nurturing a whole school oracy culture, including building oracy into assemblies and
parents’ evenings
• An oracy assessment tool, which was developed in collaboration with Cambridge University and
helps teachers to identify specific speaking and listening skills that pupils need to develop and
monitor their progress.
New year 7s receive one
lesson in oracy a week and
this is timetabled as part of
their English lessons. Literacy
and Language Coordinator
Susannah Haygarth believes
that the discrete curriculum
will help raise the status of
oracy throughout the school,
and enhance pupils’ skills:
“Because [oracy was] not embedded in the curriculum … it was
something that people could forget to do, and [say], ‘oh yeah, I
could have done that, I just didn’t because I got so bogged down
in everything else’”
“We’re training the teachers starting with English, [and] because
we teach every single child between us … we’re hoping that …
we will impact on every student eventually [because] our own
knowledge of oracy seeping through into different lessons, that’s
the idea”
“Our target year is year 7…. We’re finding with year 7, because
we’ve caught them straight away, they are just blossoming”
Susannah Haygarth, Literacy and Language Coordinator
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