Training Courses and Educational Resources for Schools and Teachers

This article argues that schools should stop searching for oracy activities and start building an oracy curriculum. Activities alone do not define what students should learn, how their learning should develop over time, or how teachers can determine whether learning has taken place. The article draws a comparison with mathematics: schools do not begin by looking for mathematics activities, but by identifying the knowledge and skills students need to learn. It suggests that spoken language should be approached in the same way, with a clearly defined curriculum that specifies content, progression and assessment.

Much of the current discussion about oracy focuses on creating a culture of talk, increasing discussion opportunities and encouraging student participation. This article argues that these are not curricula. A serious oracy curriculum must first specify what students are expected to learn. It proposes six tests: defining a body of communication knowledge, rooting talk in meaningful content, teaching knowledge about communication itself, developing metacognition, specifying progression and making assessment possible through exemplification. Using Tongue Fu Talking® as an example, the article argues that effective oracy education depends not on more talk, but on a clearly defined, progressive and assessable communication curriculum.

A planned vocabulary spine can transform the way students think, speak and learn.This blog explores why carefully sequenced vocabulary teaching matters, how Tongue Fu Talking® brings vocabulary, metacognition and oracy together through the Five-a-Week Vocabulary Spine, and how students can move beyond simply learning definitions to using words to reason, explain and communicate with increasing precision.