Oracy at St John Fisher Catholic Primary School

At St John Fisher School, every pupils’ voice is valued.

We recognise the importance of pupils having access to a high-quality Oracy Education to allow them to develop the Oracy skills that they need to thrive in School and beyond.

As a result, we are a Voice 21 School and Oracy is an integral part of our School Improvement Plan.

What is Oracy?

Oracy is articulating ideas clearly, developing understanding and engaging with others through spoken language.  It incorporates listening skills and it is a combination of learning to talk and learning through talk that results in a high-quality Oracy Education.

How do we ensure purposeful talk at St John Fisher?

Discussion Guidelines

In order to create a climate in which all pupils are supported to participate in and benefit from classroom talk, Discussion Guidelines are used in all classrooms.  These are co-constructed with pupils at the beginning of each academic year. 

Talk Tactics

At St John Fisher, we understand that for pupils to engage in productive discussions, that deepen their understanding, they must be taught about the types of contributions that they can make in a discussion. This moves group talk away from a simple sharing of ideas, towards a collaborative learning exercise. 

Talk Tactics are used to do this; they scaffold classroom dialogue.

The Oracy Framework

At St John Fisher, we use The Oracy Framework, devised by Voice 21 and Oracy Cambridge.  It provides a framework through which we can understand what constitutes good speaking and listening in different contexts. It breaks down the skills within Oracy into four distinct but interlinked strands: physical, linguistic, cognitive and social & emotional.

The use of this enables successful discussion, inspiring speech and effective communication.

Making Talk Visible

Pupils can find it difficult to analyse and reflect on talk as they can’t ‘see’ it.  For our younger pupils, in particular, we make talk visible which supports them to understand the conventions of effective discussion.