Research School Network: A New Start – Oracy Ideas for the Classroom An exploration of how the Sandringham Great Teaching and Learning framework and the new EEF toolkit have impacted my practice.

By Katie Wills

After a year out from the Research Schools team, I am back and very excited to have some time dedicated to evidence-based practice. This fresh start has been timed perfectly with the updated EEF Teaching and Learning (T&L) toolkit and the introduction of a new T&L framework within my school context.

The EEF T&L toolkit provides meta-analyses of all of the up-to-date research for a range of educational approaches. Incorporating the latest research has seen the amount of months additional progress change for many of the strands. Metacognition and Feedback remain two of the most impactful strands but they are joined at the top by a new strand Oral language interventions that has a high impact on pupil outcomes of 6 months’ additional progress.

The new Sandringham T&L framework – Great teaching and learning – is based on the work of Professor Rob Coe (e.g. The Sutton Trust’s What Makes Great Teaching?, 2014) and Evidence Based Education’s Great Teaching and Learning (Evidence Review, 2020). It sets out what Sandringham thinks are the four most important things a teacher can do to ensure great teaching and learning in their classrooms. These are: Sandringham teachers know the curriculum; Sandringham teachers build great relationships; Sandringham teachers maximise opportunities for students to learn; and Sandringham teachers teach for long term learning. See below:

In honour of these two new foci, I have trialed 4 ideas within my lessons that all involve oracy and relate to the 4 strands of the Great teaching and learning framework. I continue to experiment with the impactfulness of these bite-sized bright ideas but hopefully they provide exemplification of the different stands and prompt you to consider how oracy can be prioritised in your classroom.

Strand 1 – Curriculum – ​‘We did this last year.’

The Personal Development curriculum has been written to spiral so that students get opportunities to revisit learning and progress in their understanding (like all good curricula), however, sometimes the students see the same major themes or the same content and switch off because ​“we did this last year.” To overcome this, start each lesson with a cover slide (link below) that gets students recapping, making links and seeing how little they remember! Then take time explaining how this content builds on what they did last year – hopefully it will stop the moaning and get them engaged! See here: 

https://docs.google.com/presen…

Stand 2 – Relationships – ​‘My students don’t talk/​listen to each other.’

I have noticed that my older Personal Development classes are pretty poor at staying on task during peer discussion so I am experimenting with different ideas to improve this. One of these is called ​‘Talk first and last’. Give discussion avoiders the challenge of talking first and last in a pair/​a group and ask their partner to feedback their thoughts to the class. Make it clear before the discussion that partners who can not summarise the views of their peer will be consequenced (if it is because of lack of effort) and those who are successful will be rewarded.

Stand 3 – Opportunities – ​‘My class don’t talk.’

We all know that you sometimes get a very quiet class but for Personal Development this can be problematic as oracy is essential for effective assessment. Why not create a talking with confidence checklist? Explain the importance of talk in effective assessment in Personal Development and create a tick list of talk challenges e.g. Talk to one other person, talk in a group, talk in front of the class etc. that students must try to complete in a term. Give points to students that achieve the most ticks.

Stand 4 – Long Term learning – ​‘What does this mean(assessment terminology)?’

Last year I received feedback from staff that students struggled to understand some of the terminology used in the Personal Development assessment so I have created this break down of assessment terminology that can be shared with students. You could do this now so the students are clear on what they are aiming to learn in this major theme or wait until the end of the first major theme when going through the assessment process. See here:

https://docs.google.com/docume…