The benefits of oracy are nothing new. For years, teachers have recognised that coaching students to verbally express themselves with fluency can improve confidence and even improve their extended writing.

But while those benefits are valuable, I promote oracy for a different reason: to make my classroom a more inclusive environment.

Years ago, when I began to embed oracy into my lessons, I was astonished to see the impact. Suddenly, many students with special educational needs or disabilities were collaborating with their peers more easily than before; some pupil premium students were providing written responses of a quality far above what I had come to expect from them; students who often sat on the periphery were involving themselves in all aspects of the lesson. For the first time in my career, no one seemed to be “coasting”.

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So how exactly does my approach work?

There are plenty of ways to teach oracy, but I’ve found there are specific strategies that work best when using it as a tool to promote inclusivity. Some of these you may use already, but all of them hook students into lessons and help to make sure that everyone in the room is engaged and learning.

Ask others for feedback

Encouraging oracy doesn’t mean that all of your students need to be speaking all of the time. Sometimes, students learn best by listening to others and then feeding back on what they hear. This is a good introduction to talk for your quieter students and takes the pressure off them when it comes to sharing their ideas.

Think-Pair-Share is an easy way of doing this. Pose a question to your class and give them some time to consider their responses in silence. Then, let students share their ideas with the person they are sitting next to.

Once you are happy that the students have discussed their answers, use a no-hands up policy to gather responses. Rather than choosing your “usual suspects”, ask students who often take a back seat in your lessons.

But, here’s the twist: instead of asking them to tell you their own ideas, ask them to feedback on what their partner said. This encourages active listening, and you’ll find that quieter students are more encouraged to share ideas because they aren’t voicing their own thoughts.

Once you have mastered Think-Pair-Share, try Socratic Circles, where two students discuss a topic while a third makes a note of the key issues raised within the conversation to share with the class. You could also try this as a “goldfish bowl” discussion, in which the whole class watch one conversation unfold and provide feedback on what was said afterwards.

Discussion roles

Students often need some direction and support when embarking on a discussion, and, without scaffolding, they can be put off getting involved altogether. An easy way around this is to have clear discussion roles with prompt questions for students to use.

For example, give a more able student the role of “devil’s advocate”; throughout the discussion, their job is to ask challenging questions and argue to the contrary of everyone else.

A quieter student can be the “summariser”, keeping notes of key points and presenting them at the end, while others can be “builders”, who add to the points made by their peers. 

Exploring ideas through talk

Think about the tasks you ask students to complete in lessons individually, and whether or not they can be turned into discussions. When I teach about the gender pay gap, for example, instead of teaching statistics, getting students to read an article or the textbook on the concept, we look at a graph from the Office for National Statistics together. We discuss what we can see, and students explain what this means and why it might be.

Together, we are able to explore this new concept through conversation, ensuring that everyone can be a part of it, regardless of their ability. 

There is a whole range of conversation stimuli you could use to allow students to explore new ideas: pictures, videos and songs, to name a few. Exploring ideas through talk also allows students to embed their ideas within their own reference points making the content more relatable and therefore easier to digest.

What more could you want from a “quick chat”?

Megan McKenzie is the director of key stage 3 and deputy designated safeguarding lead at Ravens Wood School for Boys in Bromley