Oracy

Pupils engage in a range of speaking and listening activities throughout the writing process to practise, rehearse and edit their writing. Our curriculum allows pupils to engage in different types of activities to hone on their performance oracy and their critical oracy skills.

We believe performance oracy to be an excellent tool for building confidence, developing memory and building empathy. These skills are developed through activities such as: performing poetry for an audience; reading aloud work to the rest of the class for peer assessment and remembering lines from a playscript for a performance.

On the other hand, critical oracy is talk that engages others, different ideas and the outside world.  We develop these skills through discussion, debate, enquiry and role play.  This is also a way for teachers to assess how children have engaged with and understood the text that they are learning since during these activities, the speaking, listening and thinking are done simultaneously.

Rosa Parks Bus Protest

To enrich the writing process of our biographies year 4 pupils steppied back in time to the 1950s and took part in their very own bus protest! By stepping into the footsteps of Rosa Parks pupils gained insight into how she would have felt during the time and the outside pressures she would have faced! Pupils were encouraged to incorporate quote that they had researched into their spoken parts.

Oracy skills that pupils focused on were:

• Listen carefully to points raised, thinking about how to question them

• Make comments or ask questions in a discussion

• Be prepared to respond to questions  pausing to gather thoughts if necessary

'Rosa Parks is such an inspiration and we can still learn lessons from her brave protest in modern times. She must have been so frustrated with the laws against her. In my performance I used the quote 'You must never be fearful about what you are doing if it is right.' This is something that I am going to remember in my own life.' Lola

'Setting up the bus protest has helped me to understand what happened in more detail so that I can organised my ideas for my written biography!' Callum 

Performance Poetry - River by Valerie Bloom

Year 4 children performed 'The River' by Valerie Bloom. In groups, they learned the poem off by heart remembering the key oracy skills. The children demonstrated a good awareness of how different tones of voice can help intonation; spoke at an appropriate pace; esablish eye contact with the listener; experimented with facial expressions to get thier point across and incorporate used some appropraite  gestures in thier performances.

Debate - Zeus the most powerful of Ancient Greek Gods

After our work in history on Ancient Greece, pupils research, wrote and delivered their proposiiton or opposition argument on the motion Zeus the most powerful of Ancient Greek Gods.

In the delivery of their debate pupils:

• Demonstrated a good command of Standard English using ambitious vocabulary and language devices.
• Used a growning awareness of whether to add detail or remain conci and justified answers.
• Spoke at an appropriate pace and adpatated their intonation as required enunciating all words clearly.
• Established eye contact with the listener, stood straight when engaged in both speaking and listening and used some appropraite hand gestures. 
• Listen carefully to points raised, thinking about how to question them and make comments or ask questions.