Intention

At Morningside, we know that great speakers are made not born. With the right teaching & support all pupils can become confident, fluent speakers able to express themselves eloquently in a range of different contexts. At Morningside Primary School, we know that teaching oracy improves academic outcomes, through developing skills to think critically, reason together and have the vocabulary to express one’s knowledge and understanding.

Our intention is to prepare our children for later life, through weaving talk into the curriculum and embedding oracy in all aspects of the school culture. Speaking and listening opportunities are deliberate and explicitly planned to ensure all children develop the skills to listen effectively, discuss and respond with meaning, debate and disagree appropriately and explain their ideas and emotions in a coherent manner. It is our belief that developing these skills will in turn support their confidence, self –belief and courage to speak in public and share their thoughts, intellect and creativity with the world.

Implementation

Children at Morningside learn both to talk and through talk across the curriculum. We teach oracy skills using a four standard framework: physical, linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional, which underpin our school’s Oracy Skills Progression Document. This document outlines the linguistic, physical, cognitive and social/emotional skills, which are taught in each year group from Nursery to Year 6. (Oracy progression document) This enables all children to understand and develop the skills needed to be great communicators. Sentence stems, explicit vocabulary teaching, and regular opportunities to explain and challenge each others’ reasoning are a part of lessons and help children to embed their learning.

All classes have key-stage appropriate talk guidelines. These are displayed in the classroom and consistently referred to whenever a pupil is engaging in any activity requiring speaking and listening skills. 

EYFS Talk Tips

Morningside talk guideline KS1

Morningside talk guideline KS2

As part of our school’s culture of oracy, we have expectations for talk that all of our teaching staff incorporate into every lesson.  These expectations are displayed in every classroom and ensure that all voices are heard, in turn developing pupils’ ability to articulate themselves in a clear, coherent manner.

Oracy expectations for every lesson

Purposeful, rich opportunities for talk are planned across all subject areas. Subject leaders and class teachers collaborate on ideas for using purposeful talk effectively in the classroom and these are written into medium term plans across the curriculum. These talk opportunities include presentations, debates, partner talk and group work, hot seating, discussions around key texts and performances.

Pupils develop their oracy skills outside of the classroom in the following ways: being part of a student leader group such as student councilors or Digital Leaders; class assemblies; whole school performances; using structured talk in the playground and debates in whole school assemblies.

We use the Seesaw app across the school to record our pupils’ verbal reflections on their learning and share this with parents. We also use these recordings as an assessment tool to show progress in students’ oracy skills over time and reflect on areas of development.

We adopt a “No Hands Up” policy at Morningside and use lollipop sticks in all classrooms to ensure every voice is heard and all children have the opportunity to verbally articulate their reflections on their learning.

Explicit teaching of vocabulary, clear sentence stems, meaningful talk opportunities and high quality modelling from adults ensures all children develop their oracy skills and are fully supported to do so.

Teachers are trained and highly skilled in the implementation of oracy and whole-school CPD has been prioritised to support and develop the teaching of oracy skills across the curriculum.

Early Years

Communication and language is one of the three prime areas within the Early Years Foundation Stage. This is divided into three Early Learning Goals: Listening and Attention, Understanding and Speaking. In the Early Years, children learn the fundamental principles of dialogue, including taking turns to speak; speaking at an appropriate volume and body language for active listening, including looking at who is talking to you and showing eye contact. The children begin to use talk in meaningful partner talk, group work and class discussions. They build on their ability to articulate themselves in full sentences, using conjunctions to develop their opinions on their learning and the stories they read in class. By the end of reception, the children are able to offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate; with high quality modelling and support from adults in the classroom.

Key Stage One and Key Stage Two

Children are assigned Partner A or Partner B in all lessons. They are given clear talk roles, sentence stems and explicit vocabulary teaching in order to promote meaningful conversations, which deepen understanding.

Our curriculum enables children to engage in both exploratory talk (the talk we use to explore and develop our thinking) and presentational talk (the talk we use with an audience to explain, inform or persuade). The skills needed for successful group discussion, formal debate, and speech making are taught throughout the school. 

We introduce and teach a different talk tactic (discussion role) each half term to support children’s discussion skills to develop their thinking, reasoning and understanding. Talk tactics set out specific ways in which pupils can interact with each other’s ideas. Each role breaks down a different set of skills set out in the cognitive strand. Children are taught how to explicitly play each role, given prompts with sentence stems for them to refer to during discussions and given specific feedback on how well they have used the role. 

Accept, build on or challenge, ABC, strategy is used across the curriculum, where children say whether they would like to accept, build on or challenge the opinion of their peers or the class teacher. This is used as an assessment tool, as well as an opportunity to open up class discussion and provide children with ample opportunities to respectfully challenge the opinion of others.

Impact

The impact of oracy being embedded into both the culture and curriculum at Morningside Primary School is evident in the way our pupils articulate themselves. They are polite, eloquent and confident speakers, who engage appropriately in discussions both inside and outside of the classroom, as a result of the explicit teaching of talk, through high-quality talk opportunities. Children and adults consistently refer back to the school talk guidelines and use these as a point of reflection on pupil progress. Teachers use the talk guidelines, the oracy skills progression document and evidence recorded on Seesaw to assess the children’s progress, provide feedback and plan for next steps.