As a whole school, this term, we will be working on building and developing Oracy across school.
What is Oracy?
Oracy, coined in the 1960s by Andrew Wilkinson, refers to the ability to express yourself fluently and communicate effectively with other people. More than being grammatically correct, Oracy is concerned about how you speak and how you express yourself.
Having strong Oracy skills means that you have:
- The ability to structure your thoughts in a way that makes sense to others, and
- The vocabulary to say precisely what you want to say.
So, what is Oracy? Ultimately and essentially, it's about being a strong and effective communicator.
This means that it also refers to the range of speaking and listening skills, behaviours, and language necessary for communicating and working with others so that it makes sense to them. Oracy, in other words, covers the physical, social and emotional, linguistic and cognitive aspects of learning.
In each class, the children will be encourage to turn to face the person they are communicating with, maintain eye contact, speak clearly and project their voice and to listen and respond. Your support and encouragement with these skills at home would also be valuable to your child and allow them to practice the skills they are learning in school.
If you wish to find out more about Oracy, please use the following links below:
https://oracycambridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Oracy-Skills-Framework-and-Glossary.pdf
The BIG Word
To begin our Oracy Project as a whole school, the children and adults will be taking part in The BIG Word competition. An adult in the school will choose a difficult and ambitious word from our new whole school text 'The Dictionary of Difficult Words'. The word of the week will be revealed in each Friday's Newsletter. Over the weekend, the children will be encouraged to not only find out the definition of The Big Word, but also to work out who our mystery Word Master is and why they might have chosen the word. The Word Master will then be revealed at the beginning of the week in assembly and the children will be encouraged to use The BIG Word in their Oracy Talk throughout the week.
Good Luck!