Oracy

In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. It is also a route to social mobility, empowering all students, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life.' Voice 21

At Whitefield we know oracy is the key to successful and lifelong learning. Oracy underpins everything we do in school. Lessons are designed to maximise opportunities for children to talk in meaningful contexts using ambitious vocabulary and sentence stems.  Children are taught to perform and speak for different purposes to a variety of audiences through our academic and growth curriculum. Oracy is taught and assessed using the Inspire Partnership framework based on Voice 21 for oracy. This focuses on four key areas of learning. 

Additional information available on request

Vocabulary

Education is the process of preparing us for the big world and the big world has big words. The more big words I know, the better I will survive in it. Because there are hundreds of thousands of big words in English, I cannot learn them all. But this does not mean that I shouldn’t try to learn some.”

Professor David Crystal, ​‘Words, Words, Words’ 

Explicit vocabulary instruction is essential to the success of children at Whitefield. Teaching vocabulary is part of every lesson and is based on Beck, McKeown and Kucan's tiered vocabulary approach. Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary is identified in planning and taught using the principles of the EEF Vocabulary In Action report (February 2023)  The Cusp Curriculum explicitly identifies essential vocabulary and vocabulary lessons are embedded into the curriculum.