ALISON TWINER, SENIOR RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, CAMTREE, HUGHES HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK
PETE DUDLEY, CEO, CAMTREE, HUGHES HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK
PATRICK CARMICHAEL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CAMTREE, HUGHES HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK
REBECCA STOTT, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, TWINKL, UK
NICOLA ROMAINE, NATIONAL ENGLISH LEAD, TWINKL, UK
Context and challenge
Research now embedded into policy through the Curriculum and Assessment Review (DfE, 2025) and Ofsted Inspection Framework (2025) highlights that oracy is crucial for learning (Barnes, 1976). However, there are parallel concerns that oracy can be exclusive, exacerbating existing barriers to learning (Cushing, 2025).
As noted in Whole School SEND’s (2024) Teacher Handbook: SEND, ‘A significant proportion of the needs that teachers encounter in the mainstream classroom can be met by getting to know and understand individual learners.’ (p. 3) (Note that Whole School SEND represents expertise in this space, including from the National Association for Special Educational Needs.) Building on existing good practice, the recent SEND white paper (DfE, 2026) requires teachers and settings to be adaptive to learners’ individual presenting and evolving needs. This brings challenges for educators, but also opportunities.
We argue for a nuanced understanding of oracy, with an inclusive, adaptive lens on what it means to participate in and demonstrate learning. An oracy-oriented approach offers a meaningful tool for educators to understand and respond to learners’ diverse cognition and learning needs (Lee, 2018).
The approach taken
The overarching programme
As noted in Whole School SEND’s (2024) Teacher Handbook: SEND, ‘A significant proportion of the needs that teachers encounter in the mainstream classroom can be met by getting to know and understand individual learners.’ (p. 3) (Note that Whole School SEND represents expertise in this space, including from the National Association for Special Educational Needs.) Building on existing good practice, the recent SEND white paper (DfE, 2026) requires teachers and settings to be adaptive to learners’ individual presenting and evolving needs. This brings challenges for educators, but also opportunities.
Anonymised data extracts are provided from academic research around the programme. These include contributions during programme sessions and inquiry workbooks, with consent from educators and following ethical approval from the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (reference Ethics_020_2425: April 2025).
Individual cases
Early in the programme, educators kept ‘listening logs’ of two or three learners each week, progressively building detailed understanding of each learner’s different communication cues, indicators of comprehension and emotional engagement with activities. This scoping fed into research lessons, whereby educators adapted their practices to address subject-specific challenges. They embedded oracy supports and observed ‘case learners’ to note and reflect on learner progress.
Localised and collective insights
From the research lessons, many settings observed the value of introducing sentence stems in encouraging learners to share their thoughts, such as:
- ‘I think… because’ to encourage reasoning
- ‘Why do you think… ?’ to ask someone to give a reason.
For some, learners used subject-specific vocabulary in embedded ways, demonstrating their understanding of focal content through their contributions. For others, use of sentence stems indicated their attempt to contribute, but without ensuing solid reasoning.
An extracted example from one setting’s case learner observation indicates this fine balance:
They said what they wanted to say but weren’t really listening to others or following on from what they were saying. They would ask someone a question but then interrupt with their idea. They had some good points but didn’t justify their reasoning.
This highlights where a surface engagement with oracy could mask potentially exclusive interaction if left unchecked – made visible through close observation as an opportunity for action.
Some educators used talk tokens – where learners ‘spend’ tokens as they give a reason or ask what someone else thinks. Educators reflected that where groups of learners have a mix of sharing and inviting tokens (e.g. two tokens to give a reason; two tokens to ask what someone else thinks) and all have to use all their tokens, there is more likely to be a shared incentive to work, think and learn together. In many cases, it also involved supporting a wider consideration of communication than talk alone.
For example, a teacher noted through observation that one case learner had:
language difficulties and needs a lot of processing time. However, they have found the confidence to still join in the lesson but they have found the talk difficult. The oracy lessons… have flagged up that this child has more specific language barriers that need investigating by specialist SALT [speech and language therapy] referral, which may have been missed in other lessons.
This cumulative, contextualised practitioner inquiry approach allowed such insights to be surfaced and fed directly into practice with the learners. Teaching structures were adapted to suit the learning and cognition needs of learners in the moment, while identifying where more specialist support was needed.
In checking the learner experience, one learner reflected with their teacher after the first research lesson:
Talking helps me with my partner where I sit. She explains it to me. The teachers help me. I liked the talk tokens. I like using the tens frames and counters.
The study design of educator observation alongside learner reflections is a benefit of this approach. It offers opportunities for educators to act on their professional insights and understand learner experience, tailoring inclusive opportunities going forward.
Identifying such opportunities was a valuable outcome of this close focus, with a primary educator reflecting in a TeachMeet:
My inquiry is about maths, so I want to work on their explanations and their reasoning. And the [observation] notes that my colleague made just showed… that what I’m doing is the right thing, but actually, they just need more, more, more. So we’ve got to think about how we can introduce that with some visuals.
Another teacher noted from their inquiry that group discussions – intended to support engagement with multiple people – seemed overwhelming for Year 1 learners. They therefore shifted in the next lesson to paired discussions, intentionally pairing in friendship groups. This was observed to support confidence to engage, including some using non-verbal communication, such as pointing to share their thoughts. The same educator also observed Year 5 learners reflecting on balancing requirements to talk and write in lessons. The teacher shared that, initially, there was minimal talk, as learners focused on writing. In the next lesson, explicitly focused on oracy (and no parallel writing), they observed more exploratory talk, with deeper engagement around questions and the topic. She reflected that the subject-based thinking became evident through verbal interactions – which would have been invisible to teachers and peers in the moment through a writing-focused lesson.
Having identified addressing Year 10 students’ evaluation skills in science as important but difficult to learn, one teacher reflected on their inquiry-into-practice in a synchronous TeachMeet:
We’ve got a framework where we get students to think about using “two hands and one eye” for analysis and for evaluations… if they’re asked to evaluate something, they can talk through that using, “on the one hand, this, on the other hand, that, and overall, I think…”…
One thing that we noticed as we were observing this was that students were coming up with a conclusion at the end of their evaluation question, but it was still quite a surface level. So it was a big improvement: they were able to give two sides to the argument and a conclusion, but their conclusions weren’t really rich enough…
So we’re going to keep… the scaffold of “two hands one eye”, and change it in terms of how we discuss it afterwards and how students can share each other’s ideas to get them to think about having a richer conclusion.
These contextualised inquiries and the interpretations shared in this article explore how educators can make early, incremental, tailored, sensitive and supportive interventions to specific learner needs, towards improving outcomes for all.
Where do we go from here?
What can other educators take from this approach and these outcomes?
- In general terms, oracy can be facilitated inclusively, across phases and subjects, with a real intention to listen, understand and support all learners’ cognition and learning needs.
- Specifically, oracy supports – including sentence stems and talk tokens – can be valuable in structuring learners’ engagement and embedding subject understanding. However, they need to be used purposefully and monitored, to avoid or readdress formulaic application without understanding. Modelling and tailored supports, including physical or visual ones, can be very helpful.
- Regarding the approach, focusing on oracy and subject through detailed but brief observations and conversations with individual learners can really make learners’ strengths and struggles visible. This combination offers opportunities for inclusive and adaptive teaching, and to value learners’ thoughts about their learning.
This approach amplifies educators’ voices as agentic professionals, generating their own evidence in their settings. It also amplifies students’ voices, as their perspectives are elicited, listened to and acted upon, emphasising their right to an education where they feel genuinely included in their learning.
This programme was resourced and facilitated through partnership between Twinkl and Camtree, offered free to all settings and funded by Twinkl.
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