The Wenhaston Way - Oracy

Our approach: At Wenhaston Primary School we aim to ensure every child leaves our school at the end of year 6 able to express their thoughts and ideas in a confident and articulate manner. 

Principles and Expectations: 

● Through questioning, we actively encourage pupil participation in the learning process 

● We expect our pupils to contribute orally to lessons 

● We allocate time in our lessons for pupils to discuss their learning with their peers  

● Through self-assessment strategies, we encourage pupils to reflect on their learning and identify their next steps 

● We provide scaffolds such as sentence stems and vocabulary boards to enrich the language used in the classroom 

● We provide opportunities for pupils to present and perform orally 

Strategies used to achieve this. What you will see in every classroom: 

• Lolly sticks with pupil names on which are picked at random to promote pupil participation. 

• ‘Cold calling’ where pupils are selected at random 

• Pupils being told that they will be selected at random to speak shortly and to prepare a statement 

• ‘Brain dumps’ pupils being asked to list and then explain what they remember from the previous session on a particular sequence of learning

• Constant questioning of pupils to check for understanding 

• Pupils to be encouraged at the end of the lesson to reflect on their learning and consider their next steps 

• Use of a vocabulary board to explicitly teach new vocabulary. Pupils demonstrate their understanding of this vocabulary by applying it to their work both verbally and in writing 

• Teachers to provide sentence stems to assist pupils with how to shape their contributions to lessons 

• Pupils are provided with opportunities to present and share their work or experiences through ‘show and tell’ events in class or through presenting home achievements in Golden Book assembly.