Oracy @ Coney Hill

What is Oracy?

Oracy is the skill of expressing yourself fluently and communicating effectively with other people. More than being grammatically correct, oracy is concerned about how you speak and how you express yourself. It is the skills to talk and to learn through talk. 

Having strong oracy skills means that you have:

  1. The ability to structure your thoughts in a way that makes sense to others, and
  2. The vocabulary to say precisely what you want to say.

It also refers to the range of speaking and listening skills, behaviours, and language necessary for communicating and working with others, so that it makes sense to them. Oracy covers the physical, social and emotional, linguistic and cognitive aspects of learning.

Click to Download Oracy guide for parents [pdf 291KB] Click to Download
Click to Download Oracy challenge [pdf 263KB] Click to Download

Oracy @ Coney Hill

In September 2023, we joined the Voice 21 programme, to help us to develop oracy further in our school. Oracy improves children’s outcomes in all areas of learning. It also fosters wellbeing and confidence enabling all children to have a voice and to be heard. Oracy equips children with the skills they need in their lives beyond school and to be active members of the community.

Oracy is being weaved through our curriculum at Coney Hill. We recognise the extreme importance of being able to talk well and learn through talk and the difference that this makes to outcomes for our pupils.  We are working in partnership with Voice 21, to develop our approach, expertise and to refine these crucial skills. 

What are we focussing on this year?

  • Championing effective oracy opportunties across our curriculum, as we get to know the Oracy Framework
  • To continue to promote and improve vocabulary development across the school
  • To ensure our teachers have a strong understanding of what constitutes good oracy and are intentional in their teaching of oracy.
  • To ensure that opportunities for oracy are regular, purposeful, appropriately pitched and thoughtfully planned

In lessons this might look like:

  • Talk partner work including talk tasks
  • Discussion tasks
  • Use of ‘My turn, your turn’
  • Clear vocabulary identified in all lessons with definitions taught
  • Use of sentence stems
  • Vocabulary and sentence stems displayed and referred to on working walls.
  • Staff modelling and repeating expected sentence structures
  • Role play and drama tasks
  • Visual aids

The Voice 21 Oracy Framework

Our Star Speakers for the Look Who’s Talking Competition!

Look who's talking competition