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Oracy and Disciplinary Mathematics
Bridging Communication and Mathematical Thinking
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by Derby Research School
on the
Director of Learning for Performing and Creative Arts &‘Speak Out’ – Oracy Lead
I am passionate about the impact that the Performing Arts can have on children, and the vital role it should play in every school. I am fortunate to teach and lead an exception group of colleagues who share my vision and who provide invaluable opportunities for children to experience the arts both through the curriculum content and our extra-curricular provision. When I asked them ‘Do you think we use oracy effectively in our teaching?” The answer was naturally yes; and why wouldn’t it be? We are a thriving faculty, and talking, verbal feedback, performing, speaking and listening was what we did best – wasn’t it?
It wasn’t until I came across a project by Sheffield University on the EEF website that I began to question whether there was more we could do in the Arts through introducing specific and targeted dialogic teaching to improve pupil engagement and more specifically the quality of classroom talk. https://educationendowmentfoun…
This discovery was also a turning point in planning the ‘Speak Out!’ project. It was evident that in addition to coaching and upskilling our teachers to be confident in using Drama techniques in their teaching, it was also crucial to consider how oracy could also be embedded within everyday classroom practice.
I attended a training day with Amy Ford at Derby Research school, and was introduced to the EEF’s evaluation of the Voice 21 Oracy program – a charity dedicated to improving student oracy in schools using the Oracy Framework. This research indicated that focused oracy interventions can lead to noticeable improvements in students’ speaking and listening skills. https://educationendowmentfoun…
Discovering this framework was crucial; as it broke down the skills needed for oracy into four accessible strands: Physical, linguistic, cognitive, and social and emotional.
Accessing this framework enabled the Primary teachers and Head Teachers in the project to consider what oracy skills they wanted to develop and why; this in turn provided a focused starting point in terms of planning with their drama practitioner.
The framework also provided us as a cohort, to have a shared language in terms of planning ideas, expectations and outcomes.
I felt it was important that the teachers and artists on the project were given the opportunity to understand more about Voice 21 and their approach to oracy and therefore I organised CPD led by Derby Research school focusing on Voice 21 groupings and Talk Tactics to scaffold and embed meaningful opportunities for oracy in the classroom.
These methods also provided us with a structure for inclusive classroom practices for EAL and disadvantaged students across the six schools which was a focused area of our project and enquiry question.
Voice 21 recommends pre-teaching target vocabulary, using sentence starters, and providing visuals or graphic organizers to support comprehension and language production. They also advocate for frequent repetition and the use of language drills, such as structured conversation games, to help students internalise new language structures https://voice21.org/eal-learne…
They also highlight the need for EAL students to develop academic English, and recognise that this takes longer to acquire than conversational language. Within their classroom practices they recommend scaffolding opportunities for target students to practice using subject-specific vocabulary in context, to enhance their academic language skills over time.
Understanding this was imperative in considering how we could provide targeted support for these students in our early planning stages https://voice21.org/oracy-acro…
Having explored these ideas, the next part of the process was CPD for teachers led by our Drama practitioners exploring how Drama techniques could support the Voice 21 methodologies to create oracy rich classrooms.
In my next blog I will share the Drama methods that we explored as a cohort, the impact of these on oracy and engagement in the classroom and the important role that coaching played in developing confident and reflective teachers.
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Bridging Communication and Mathematical Thinking
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