A high-quality oracy education provides opportunities for children to learn both to talk and through talk. Many of the approaches that are fundamental to delivering an oracy education not only promote inclusive practice but also provide universal support for classroom talk. Much of the best practice in oracy is about creating routines, having clear expectations and providing appropriate scaffolds so all children can participate. To create routines around oracy, teachers might want to create Discussion Guidelines with their classes which can be used during guided activities for both praise and target setting around talk.

The Oracy Framework is a helpful tool, enabling teachers to identify the skills involved in different contexts for talk and to plan for a range of experiences and encounters with spoken language. Teachers can view their provision through the lens of the framework, considering how children might use language differently in different areas. For example, how could a numeracy area be set up to elicit reasoning and hypothesising? Or how do the home and construction areas promote descriptive language and the structuring of narratives?

Engaging children in high-quality back and forth interactions supports Sustained Shared Thinking [1] (an approach adopted by many early years and Key Stage 1 practitioners) by modelling and engaging children in skills such as clarifying, predicting and describing – skills that support later reading processes. Voice 21's Talk Tactics for early language development are a tool designed to help teachers to support and challenge thinking in back-and-forth interactions with children.

Students learning English as an additional language benefit from a high-quality oracy education, both because it mimics the way that we learn our first language, through oral interaction, and because it can be the ideal way to acquire vocabulary and learn the grammar of a new language. It’s important to recognise where students are in their English language learning. For learners who are very new to English, there is a typical ‘silent phase’ [2] where realistically they may not speak much but will benefit from listening and language modelling by both teachers and peers.

Importantly, we need to view the languages students bring with them to the classroom as an asset rather than a barrier to their literacy development in English. Encouraging students to use their first languages in the classroom can support their learning and help establish a sense of belonging too. [3]

Voice 21’s Voicing Vocabulary Report (2021–23) identified that an oracy-rich approach to vocabulary development not only accelerates students’ progress in reading but makes them more confident to share their ideas and thinking with others. In this study, we concluded that the active ingredients to create an oracy-rich approach to vocabulary development are:

1.     Establishing a shared understanding of oracy.

2.     Prioritising vocabulary in strategic planning.

3.     Contextualising and rehearsing new vocabulary through talk.

4.     Monitoring ownership of new vocabulary through talk.

5.     Collaborating across key stages to understand how vocabulary progresses.

Whilst this project focused on vocabulary development at the Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 transition, the underpinning principles behind this approach are transferable across phases. You can read the full report and watch accompanying videos by following this link. 

Ultimately, all children should be given the opportunity to have their voice heard, but to do that, educators need to purposely plan for and develop the oracy skills needed for communication in a range of contexts. As teachers, parents or resource providers, we all have a part to play and together we can help to unlock children’s reading, writing and language skills – empowering them to leap into the brightest of futures.