30 Second BriefingOracy in Action is a complete oracy programme for primary schools, enabling you to deliver a sequenced, evidence-based speaking and listening intervention across your school.
1. Oracy interventions help close the attainment gap
Children with good communication skills are four times more likely to get five good passes at GSCE.
We firmly believe that oracy is a skill – something to be taught, and not ‘caught’. This applies to teachers as well as pupils, so we provide built-in CPD to complement the programme, as well as opportunities to join further training, networking and support sessions.
We also agree with the recent Speak for Change report, which indicates that if children don’t have the opportunity to develop these skills early on, the chance to close the language gap becomes much harder.
2. There’s no additional workload!
In our pilot programme of Oracy in Action, 90% of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that the programme did not entail a significant increase to their workload!
Oracy in Action has been designed to be an off-the-shelf yet flexible programme, offering all you need to deliver high-quality oracy provision, including detailed lesson plans, teaching materials and supporting resources.
3. You can use it across the curriculum
While Oracy in Action has been developed as a stand-alone series of lessons, the use of debate skills as the lens through which we teach oracy means that all the skills and games are easily transferable to any other subject or context.
Teaching children useful sentence openers and helping them to frame their responses to a wide range of questions means that they have an excellent grounding of skills that can be deployed across the curriculum, and can particularly help with writing tasks.
We’ve highlighted where Oracy in Action supports the national curriculum and programmes of study, helping schools to see how they can expand the programme to other areas. It also provides excellent resources and evidence to demonstrate how you are meeting the speaking and listening aspects of the national curriculum for Ofsted or governance purposes.
“We’ve highlighted where Oracy in Action supports the national curriculum and programmes of study, helping schools to see how they can expand the programme to other areas.”
4. It helps develop interpersonal skills
Recent research commissioned by the English-Speaking Union found that more than half of adults (52%) said their children or grandchildren aged 5–9 years old are struggling to make friends because they lack self-confidence in speaking to other children.
Through teaching non-verbal communication and listening as much as speaking, Oracy in Action helps to develop this confidence, helping children to manage their relationships in a positive and constructive way.
5. Oracy in Action works!
One hundred per cent of teachers who took part in our pilot study said that they would recommend Oracy in Action to other schools, with 90% saying that pupils gained confidence in expressing themselves after taking part.
Find out more and download the first lesson plan for free at esu.org/oracy-in-action.
- Oracy in Action is a complete oracy programme for KS1 and 2 developing vital speaking and listening skills in an engaging and enjoyable format, with direct links to the national curriculum and Ofsted
- Oracy in Action contains comprehensive lesson plans with adaptive teaching flexibility
- The programme is grab-and-go, with resources and materials available immediately which can be deployed throughout your school with minimal additional workload
- Oracy in Action develops interpersonal skills, especially important following the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as being applicable across the curriculum
