Oracy at Brooklands Farm
We strive to help children understand themselves as individuals within a community, giving them the tools in life to be the best they can be and be the difference they want to be in the world. The oracy curriculum at Brooklands Farm is designed to support the development of the whole child: building skills sequentially to enable them to effectively and confidently communicate in many different situations. Learning to talk well and learning well through talking is at the heart of our oracy curriculum: children learn to express themselves articulately and have the confidence and competence to agree with, ask questions of and challenge others.
Many of our pupils start early school life without the oracy skills relevant for their age. We also have a significant number of EAL students and children arriving in school with little or no spoken English. We strive to develop spoken language and listening skills through the taught curriculum, the hidden curriculum, playtimes and lunchtimes, clubs and the whole ethos of the school.
What Is Oracy?
Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. Oracy develops students’ confidence, articulacy and capacity to learn.
Voice 21.
Oracy is…
- Engaging with others ideas
- Reasoning together
- Listening to understand
- Changing people’s minds
- Telling compelling stories, anecdotes and jokesÂ
- Developing reasoned arguments
- Expressing yourself articulatelyÂ
- Speaking up for what you believe in
Pupils are taught oracy skills during one dedicated oracy lesson each week (looking 1. at global and 2. community issues and 3. oracy framework). During these lessons, pupils are taught listening skills, sentence stems and talk tactics to enable discussions to take place. They have the opportunity to experience a range of talking styles: both exploratory talk and presentational talk.
At Brooklands Farm staff and children follow a skills progression for oracy across the school from EYFS to Year 6 (see Oracy Skills Progression). This progression incorporates the four strands of the oracy framework for each phase.Â
Oracy Policy
News on 2024 Oracy Projects at Brooklands FarmÂ
During the Spring term, all children took part in Oracy Read Aloud Festival. This initiative was a chance for children to practise and improve on the oracy skills they have developed during performance poetry last year and their December performances this year. It was also a chance for us, as a school, to celebrate the joy of reading. The Read Aloud festival is our way to support children’s literacy development, languages skills and to support all out children in developing a love of books.Â
Parents Reading Aloud
Research has shown that reading aloud to children gives them a head start on language and literacy skills, as well as provides support in the relationship between parent and child. It can also help expand your child’s comprehension and exposing them to more challenging books expands their vocabulary.Â
20 mins a day = Exposure to 1.8 million words and 85 hours of reading per year.Â
5 mins per day = Exposure to 282,000 words and 21 hours of reading per year.
All children ‘Read Aloud’ to an audience of their choosing, performing an extract from one of their core books that they learnt to read aloud confidently, fluently and independently.
The top performer from each year group (determined by the children) performed in a Read Aloud Festival that parents were invited to.
