Oracy is for everyone
A child’s oral language development is a key foundation for attainment and future success right across the curriculum. It's also integral to a child's confidence and wellbeing.
That’s why, at Pearson, we’re committed to supporting schools on their oracy journey. We want to help set every pupil on the road to achieve their potential with the ability to articulate their thoughts, ideas, and opinions with confidence – no child should be left behind.
Our key oracy principles are:
- Oracy is for everyone: every child should be given opportunities to have their voice heard and develop the skills needed to express themselves.
- From educators to parents to resource providers, everyone has a part to play in helping children to develop their oral language skills.
- Oracy should be embedded within the curriculum, and is key to children’s confidence and wellbeing.
- Oracy can unlock reading, writing and a broader vocabulary; talking is an essential part of these processes.
We show our commitment to supporting teachers with children’s language development and oracy in the products we provide.
Here are some examples of how we embed oracy within our products
- Delivers oral language enrichment to all children through 1:1 and small group intervention, and also as a whole class.
- Aims to develop children’s vocabulary, listening and narrative skills.
- Supports children to speak in grammatically correct sentences.
- Develops confidence in communication.
- Uses a dialogic approach to achieving comprehension mastery:
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- Develops language comprehension through listening and talking about stories and other literature on a breadth of subjects.
- Gives all pupils an opportunity to listen to and discuss the same texts as their peers, regardless of ability.
- Uses effective questioning to deepen pupils’ understanding, prompting them to think about the ideas and language used in the texts they read and hear, driving productive discussion and improving attainment.
- Perfect for reading aloud, developing expression and fluent communication, and learning new vocabulary in context.
- Lessons integrate spoken language opportunities including book talk, discussion, debate, and drama through live units:
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- Performance: the live units are anchored around a ‘mission’ e.g. writing and performing a play, or radio show, and build to a final performance for the class.
- Reading aloud: each unit of work contains plenty of reading aloud to support children’s comprehension when reading a shared book. Suggestions and prompts are given for children and teachers reading their own work aloud, too.
- Oral rehearsal: throughout the lesson plans, you’ll see plenty of references to encouraging oral rehearsal when children are writing their own pieces.
- Language choices: ‘Grammar blasts’ help children to learn the grammar terms. Children comment on the language choices in the whole texts they read. Children talk about their own language choices when writing.
- Power Maths lessons are structured to give more time for partner talk and discussion which helps embed learning and development of mathematical vocabulary.
- Teachers talk through 'Discover' sections with their class, making it accessible to all the levels within their group.
- 'Share' sections encourage children to discuss their working out to get the answer to the 'Discover' questions (whether they've worked through these as a class or individually).
- 'Think together' has an 'I do', 'We do', 'You do' format. The class should discuss questions 1 and 2 and should be working individually by question 3.
- 'Power Ups' can be discussed as a class as part of the starter before the main part of each lesson.
Our oracy story is constantly evolving. We'll be adding more to this page over the next few months so keep an eye on it to stay up to date!
Talk to us
Speak to a member of our friendly team for support with making the right oracy decisions for your school.
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Try our products for free to experience how they can enhance teaching and learning in your school.
Making the connection between oracy and reading - join our free webinar
Come along and join our panel discussion with Voice 21 on 22 May! We'll be focusing on the link between oracy and reading, and answering questions around how early oral language development supports reading and vice versa.
Jean Gross CBE's top tips for supporting language development
Jean says that whilst one way of supporting pupils' language development is by putting in short-term, small-group interventions, often led by teaching assistants (that absolutely should be part of every school's plan!), there are also strategies that teachers can use in their everyday interactions with children. Read her blog to explore top tips for weaving language support into high-quality teaching in the regular classroom.