Oracy refers to excellence in speaking and listening, and it is extremely important to us as a school.

Just as we see it as a moral imperative to teach our children to read and write well, as they unlock the rest of the curriculum and pave the way for success in education and in life, we award matching status to oracy. 

In planned, purposeful learning activities which are woven through our curriculum, we teach children to actively listen, to speak in 'scholar sentences' (complete, grammatically-correct sentences), to speak like specialists (using subject-specific terminology), to speak for different purposes and to different audiences, to discuss and debate, to disagree politely, and to understand the power of their voice for advocacy. 

Each week, we have a timetabled Topical Talk session, where the children discuss a contemporary issue with each other and their teacher. We also have the Thursday 'Thunk', where children respond to questions which have no answers, such as 'What colour is happiness?'

Our curriculum has taken the ambition of the National Curriculum for Spoken Language in Years 1-6 and built upon it. We have developed our own research-informed Oracy Framework, which states the knowledge and skills that we expect our children to develop in each year-group, and we have Oracy end-points, which we assess them against.

Competence in Oracy is cumulative - it builds as children move through school. Our vision by the time they leave us is that our children are confident, effective orators, who can express themselves eloquently and successfully in any context or situation.