Research School Network: GUEST BLOG: Maddy Adams from The Woodroffe School on oracy How adopting a reflective outlook can refine classroom practice

The EEF’s new implementation guidance report stresses the importance of ongoing reflection in driving improvement, with ​‘Reflect’ as one of the key behaviours. In this guest blog, Maddy Adam from The Woodroffe School shows how individuals adopting a reflective outlook can help refine practice.

This is my first blog post and I am already feeling like it could be extremely useful to my own teaching. Why? In the same way that training or mentoring new teachers forces personal reflection, writing a blog about what you have been doing in your classroom is a way to reflect on your own practice and improve it.

The importance of oracy really struck me after doing some research into it last year. I initially found that in my maths classroom I relied heavily on discussion to aid learning but didn’t quite appreciate that it was oracy skills I was implicitly teaching. Now I am more aware of my use of oracy in the maths classroom it has proven vital and I am attempting to be more explicit in my approach.

Initially, I tried out some ideas from Talking Points by Lyn Dawes^1, with several classes, using statements rather than questions to encourage students to discuss. Changing from questions to statements initially really threw the students: they immediately wanted to categorise the statements into True/​False or Agree/​Disagree. I reflected on the lesson and I decided students were used to having ​“the right answer” in maths, so discussing possibilities was a new and uncomfortable experience.

I spent the next half term working on activities that revolved around discussion and developing metacognitive thinking around maths. Students were encouraged to answer questions, and to move around the classroom, get help from others and to return to their seats to help the people around them. 

After a half term working almost exclusively with discussion-based tasks, I attempted the Talking Points activity again. This time there was a noticeable difference in the way students communicated. They no longer shouted each other down or stopped peers sharing their ideas. They listened. They communicated ideas. They changed each other’s minds. They were persuasive and thoughtful.

The main thing I discovered from my focus on oracy was that it helped built a classroom environment of respect and security. Students were not afraid of asking questions or making mistakes because the class would listen and others would offer help rather than judgement. It was an incredible change and made me even more passionate about building oracy into more parts of my teaching. I am starting with HOW students speak, as this requires small tweaks rather than a large shift in pedagogy. I am giving more time for students to think about their responses, asking students to project their voice so everyone can hear, asking for all answers to a question so we can discuss misconceptions and work as a team to get to an answer. It is going really well and long may it continue.