Reconsidering oracy: Improving paired discussions in a secondary history classroom
Written by: Helen Riddle
6 min read
HELEN RIDDLE, DIRECTOR OF TEACHING & LEARNING, ST DUNSTAN’S COLLEGE, UK
Context
Inspired by the Educational Endowment Foundation’s guidance report on improving literacy (Quigley and Coleman, 2021), our recent whole-school CPL (continuous professional learning) has focused on literacy. Staff chose one of three linked CPL sessions that responded to the EEF report: teaching targeted vocabulary (EEF recommendation 2), reading complex texts (recommendation 3) and oracy (recommendation 6). This differentiated for participants’ needs and interests (Cordingley et al., 2015) and followed Kennedy’s (2016) emphasis on combining content knowledge with broader pedagogical goals.
My department’s focus on oracy was something that we had not looked at closely, even though history lessons are often discursive and student talk featured regularly in lessons. Following the EEF’s recommendation of promoting high-quality talk as part of departmental training (Quigley and Coleman, 2021
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