Ann Wright - What impact does targeted Oracy within KS3 Art & Design lessons have in overall levels of confidence and use of subject specific language? Delivered over part of the Summer Term

Ann Wright - What impact does targeted Oracy within KS3 Art & Design lessons have in overall levels of confidence and use of subject specific language? Delivered over part of the Summer Term.

I n t e n t-

To improve levels of Oracy within Art & Design lessons at KS3, and further support whole school Oracy.

T h e i s s u e –

Currently KS3 students do not have the confidence and skills to speak fluently about Art images, and also their own Artwork, leading to less depth of understanding of concepts and contexts further on within the Art & Design Curriculum at GCSE and A Level.

T a r g e t s t u d e n t s

The group I selected was aYr7 Art group, mainly as they are a mixed ability group that I had enough time to carry out several excercises, in order to make some useful judgements and see how effective the strategies might be.

R e s e a r c h

The main aim is to keep building on the research I have done previously and extend the Departmental strategies we have begun to devise regarding Oracy. T. Sherrington and S. Stafford (Great Teaching Techniques: A Culture of Speech) say that, ‘By creating a wide range of speech opportunities within the curriculum, we can ensure that students develop fluency in the formal Standard English’. I know that there is often an acute time pressure within Art & Design lessons to focus on the practical skills, so in order to support and nurture an ‘Oracy Culture’ there must be a shift in the balance of practical time over speaking and discussion time in the Art & Design Department. My aim is to start at the most basic levels of Oracy and build from there. As N Mercer highlights, ‘the role of the ‘school’ environment being some students only chance to develop a repertoire of talking skills’ means there is a real need for Oracy. As Mercer comments ‘It is too easy for us all to assume that a young person has mastered ‘Oracy’ automatically’. From this viewpoint I decided to show and model how to speak about Artwork via two tasks which I have trialled with Year Seven students. I gained much inspiration from publications such as Voice 21 Speaking Frankly which states that, ‘Good levels of Oracy are achieved when students are given opportunities to…’ ‘Develop a range of verbal skills, and are introduced to Oracy with clear guidance when using key vocabulary.’ The tasks I have tried out have made a start on the journey towards more eloquent students at CEC.

Suggestions from this the Speaking Frankly publication are:

Creating familiar and established talk protocols.

Using sentence stems to prompt pupils to engage with the contributions of their classmates and give reasons for their views, whilst a list of target vocabulary highlights higher-level language for students to select and use.

For teachers to get students in class to talk in purposeful and meaningful ways, to model good speaking and listening in their practice, track their pupils’ progress in speaking skills and value and celebrate the spoken word.

Carry out explicit planning and intentional guiding of pupils’ talk (such as scaffolding discussions and giving students talking guidelines and roles).

‘Talk supports thinking, and that means it supports learning.’

Beyond the first priority of learning the meaning of the terms there is a confidence barrier in using them. Students often simply don’t feel comfortable using formal speech because it feels false; it isn’t natural. This is clearly an impediment to learning. (Tom Sherrington)

A c t i o n

‘Beyond the first priority of learning the meaning of the terms there is a confidence barrier in using them. Students often simply don’t feel comfortable using formal speech because it feels false; it isn’t natural. This is clearly an impediment to learning.’ (Tom Sherrington)

I first used a questionnaire to use as a baseline of how confident students felt in general about speaking out in class. This I then repeated at the end with a small selection of students (as some were at UKSA) to see if their confidence had improved or their outlook towards Oracy had changed.

The tasks that the students carried out were as follows:

Describing a picture to someone who can’t see the picture. This was to see if students could describe in more detail and also to see if students could listen and build a picture in their minds of the images being described. The ‘game’ format in pairs was devised in order to make things more fun and less intimidating.

They were also asked to practise using Key Words in describing what they were doing in class, using prompts and Key Phrases to a partner/ friend. Again this was intended to build basic building blocks on which to build in subsequent lessons and years further on in KS3 and beyond. The aim was to make it ‘easy’ to do, no larger audience, just getting used to hearing their own voice using more formal and specialist language.

Most of my reasons for approaching this issue in these ways were from the Voice 21 initiative, where Oracy was embedded throughout the school, and the emphasis was on a whole school approach. With this I mind was aware that our Year Seven students could be the starting point for our Art Department strategies that we could then build on each year to eventually have an integrated approach throughout KS3, 4 & 5.

Questionnaire Results (30 students)

➢ 76 % - Did not feel confident speaking out in class. ➢ 86% - Didn’t want to look stupid in front of other people if they got something ‘wrong’. ➢ 93% - Didn’t like being put on the spot with a question. ➢ 14% - Didn’t want to look too keen in class.

The ‘Describing Game’ The students were separated into two groups; one describing, one listening. The describers were given a sheet of images and asked to silently choose one to describe to their partner. They then described the image. The listening person then had to choose from the range of images to see if they got the correct one. There was a very mixed success rate, however, this wasn’t the main goal. The students engaged in describing the images really well, they seemed to like the idea of a game and did not give the answer away to their partner when they were trying to choose the right image. I asked a small sample of students about the task and how difficult they thought it was and also what they thought they had learned from the game. Most students thought it was difficult at first but then got into it as they found more details to describe. Some deliberately tried to make it easy for their partner and some did the opposite, the boys in particular saw it as a challenge and got into the competitive spirit. The partner who was listening and choosing the image at the end, was sometimes less engaged and involved in the task (this could be due to individuals’ attention spans). Most said that they found it a useful way to stretch their describing skills as the images were deliberately all very similar. They commented on how they didn’t do much describing in this way in other subjects, even in English lessons.

➢ Do the game more often ➢ Supply key words for the describing students to help them use more technical and specialist words. ➢ Possibly have some prompts to create a more regulated sequence of descriptive statements.

Examples of the sheets of images the students were given to describe.

S a y I t D o I t T a s k

This involved a simple task of asking the students to tell the person next to them what they were going to do in the lesson. E.g. ‘Today I am going to mix Tertiary colours using a Primary and a Secondary colour, and paint them onto my design.’ There were simple prompts on the board connected to the main tasks of the lesson. Then the students were asked to repeat what they had done at the end of the lesson but with an added evaluative comment. These were supplied on the board to help students begin to use the more formal, structured and specialist language that we want them to eventually spontaneously use of their own accord.

This task was repeated several times throughout the last half term and I noticed some students began to get more confident with this task, however, the lack of time available to build up a routine and develop confidence with speaking about their own work, meant that there wasn’t any significant improvement seen overall. However, despite this I feel that the task would, over time, if used and reinforced enough, would help students gain the vocabulary necessary to be able to speak more expertly and fluently about their own artwork.

E v a l u a t i o n

What next?

Next September I will continue to use the ‘Say It Do It’ task and try to build up a regular expectation that students say something to each other about what they are doing in class. There will need to be more detailed word banks, phrases and time given to this, in order to build confidence over time.

The strategy is fairly simple and basic and relies upon repetition over time to be effective. There is a need to start with small achievable goals that can be developed into something more natural and automatic as students move through the years becoming more adept at talking about ‘Art’. There is also the issue of some students who do not have a ‘friend’ with whom they feel comfortable to talk with, or even students that have other issues and difficulties with speaking and reading. All of these intricacies will need to be considered when developing resources and lesson slides.

I am looking forward to encouraging our students to speak in class more confidently and build on these strategies that I have begun with Year Seven students, and hopefully over time this will gradually permeate through each year group.

‘We place students at an enormous disadvantage if we do not teach them how to use the prevailing formal, standard English code if their background has not given them the skills to use it spontaneously.’ T. Sherrington