Oracy: Learning Through Talk

About this course

We know that speaking and listening skills are the foundation of children's success. There is a direct link between pupils’ spoken language skills, their academic outcomes and their social and emotional development.  

“Oracy education – or the lack of it – can be a significant determinant of a child's future life outcomes.” – Neil Mercer, Oracy Cambridge 

Join us on this brand-new piece of training to consider how to develop an engaging, creative and progressive speaking and listening curriculum, where pupils learn to talk and learn effectively through talk. Gain increased understanding of how to support children to become articulate speakers and critical thinkers, with expanding vocabulary knowledge and who speak competently in a range of contexts. 

This half-day, face-to-face training will take place at Summerswood Primary School and will include:  

• Exploration of the physical, linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional aspects of language. 
• Strategies for embedding spoken language to enhance teaching and learning within reading and writing.
• Practical approaches for developing pupils’ ability to collaborate through conversation and increase participation in discussion. 
• Ways to support children to speak confidently for a range of purposes and audiences. 

Ofsted’s most recent English subject report (Telling the story: the English education subject report 2024) highlighted the need for schools to deliver a curriculum for spoken language and detailed the importance of developing oracy, including vocabulary. It notes how essential this provision is for the academic progress of all children and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.  

It reports that: 

• Schools need an explicit curriculum for developing spoken language  
• Children need to practise and refine their spoken language in a range of contexts and for different purposes 
• Embedding the teaching of rich vocabulary in context allows pupils to think, speak and write with increasing confidence 

This training will support you to evaluate and review the quality of existing provision, informing next steps for successful implementation at both school and class level.