Claire Brooks - How can I ensure quiet students engage in Oracy-based activities?

According to the APPG (All-Party Parliamentary Group), ‘Oracy is key to success in literacy’. Alex Quigley, in his book ‘Closing the Reading Gap’, states that “Oracy supports metacognition’. Menzies and Millard report that “Oracy boosts decoding skills and reading Comprehension”. How could I ignore this research from reliable sources? As an English teacher, of course I expect my students to develop their literacy and be aware of how they learn, but what could I do if some students were reluctant to participate in oracy activities? If it was only the confident speakers who were making most progress, my challenge was to get the quiet students in both my English and E1M lessons to fully participate in oracy-based activities.

I decided to focus on a year 7 English class. In this class, there are three students with ASD who do not like working in groups - this is specified on two of their SEN passports. One of the students used to wear defenders when we did ‘Turn and Talk’ tasks. There is another student who used to suffer from anxiety and speak so quietly that no one could hear. There are two students who spoke very quietly and took time to articulate their ideas, much to the frustration of some peers. In contrast, there are many confident speakers, some of whom already knew each other from Primary School, and had performed together in their school production of Oliver Twist, our first unit of work at CEC. I soon realised that I would have to prepare very specific scaffolding and roles to enable the quieter students to succeed, not just for academic/cognitive development but for their emotional well-being too. I also wanted the more vocal students to become better listeners.

I started by re-reading some material from Voice 21 and searching their most recent findings. I used Voice 21’s ‘Oracy Framework: Capturing Progress’ grid. Despite reading about the emotional and social impact of Oracy in ‘The state of Speaking in our schools’ I decided to focus on just the Cognitive and Linguistic aspects, as this was my reason for targeting these students. I studied several models of sentence starters used by various teachers and researchers such as Lemov’s ‘Habits of Discussion sentence starters’, Voice 21’s suggestions, and sentence starters displayed by a school in the Tower Hamlets Oracy Hub. I also researched the effect of roles within discussion such as clarifier and summariser. Although familiar with allocating roles to students, on reflection, in the past I had given anxious or shy students the role of recorder, scribe or assessor to avoid forcing them to speak. I found many good ideas for using oracy strategies to build vocabulary and discuss ideas, but I struggled to find out how any of these roles worked particularly well with students who do not like talking. According to Isabel Beck, “text is a far less effective vehicle for learning new words than oral language.” (2013). I had to find a way.

Approaches I used included:

➢ Adapting text on PowerPoint slides. I took out what I would say anyway, and instead added very specific instructions as to who to discuss the question with and for how long (See example below). This had the effect of a calm, focused start ASD students.

➢ Modelling - I modelled how to use the sentence stems in the same way as we model written responses. I gave examples of when you might use each one in the context of the lesson, which helped to build students’ confidence. ➢ Display – We made a ‘Discussion Rules’ poster. ➢ Roles – I allocated specific roles with a focus on giving more vocal students a task in which they had to actively listen. ➢ Turn-taking – I trialled Lemov’s ‘Long hair, short hair’ to avoid wasting time with ‘A and B’ pairs. (“ I don’t want to be ‘A’ now”) ➢ Seating plans – I changed the seating plan to accommodate speaking partners. ➢ Listening targets for talkative students - I referred to Voice 21’s Listening Ladder. E v a l u a t i o n

Roles - When looking at oracy resources I was using, I wondered if some were too childish as they were based on resources produced for primary school. However, I decided the dual coding on the role cards worked well, and although the images were simple, they were easy to interpret and did not affect the use of tier 3 vocabulary I expected students to use in their talk. I realised that I had not been spending enough time on clarifying exactly what was expected for each role. Some students – including my ‘quiet’ ones needed the roles in front of them to keep referring to, rather than looking at the screen. With practice, they became less reliant on the stems. Focussing on oracy made me much more aware of the three students who, given the chance, would dominate the whole class talk. By having certain roles, it provided clear boundaries.

Sentence stems – Although some students felt uncomfortable using formal, Standard English when speaking to peers, the added benefit was that they ‘got in role’ and continued to use this register beyond the sentence starter. One of the ASD students said she preferred to adapt some of the sentence starters, which I agreed to as they were also in formal English.

Discussion Rules

Use formal English

Take turns to speak

Be an active listener

Use the sentence stems

Everyone’s ideas are welcome

Be prepared to change your mind

Focus on your role

Listening Ladder – Voice 21 suggest using the ladder “to support students to reflect on their discussion and to set targets” I found this useful for confident, loud students as it helped them to focus on listening to peers to be able to summarise what they said. By focusing these students on listening, the quieter students had more opportunity to participate.

Seating plans - I was limited this year by having all the SEND students on the front row. I initially thought it would work to pair a more talkative student with a quieter one to initiate the talk, but it soon became apparent that some quiet students did not speak at all. By changing the seating plan, two quiet students could encourage each other in a non-threatening way.

Discussion rules – having this poster attached to the wall was a useful way for me to indicate non-verbally (by pointing) that a rule had been broken.

Overall, the combination of these strategies did support quiet students in the classroom. The student who sometimes wears ear-defenders at school has not worn them in English since returning after lockdown. However, she does find she cannot articulate her thoughts in ‘Turn and Talk’ activities when everyone else in the class is speaking; there is no quiet space outside the classroom for this to take place either. One SEN and PP quiet student in particular has become much more vocal during oracy activities, which, she told me, has helped her both cognitively and emotionally – though not in those words.

However, as in the EEF funded pilot programme developed by school 21 and the University of Cambridge, there is a lack of qualitative data to support improved oracy in my English class. EEF “observed that although teachers felt that there could be longer-term academic benefits, no quantitative data on academic outcomes was collected; therefore, ‘the oracy assessment measure had limited reliability.” W h a t n e x t ?

In the next academic year, I will consider ‘Turn and talk’ partners when adapting the seating plan. I plan to use some of the resources I have made, such as the Discussion Rules poster and Discussion role cards next year, embedding these into my practice right at the start of term. I will also continue to use some of these resources in E1M lessons.

When Covid restrictions are lifted, seating plans will be more flexible, with small groups being able to sit in circle and make eye contact. I also want to make more use of the IZ spaces for 0racy activities so quiet pairs can stand apart from louder students. Having a more permanent classroom base will enable better display. I am aware that I need to plan oracy tasks in more detail, giving advanced warning to ASD students when longer oracy-based activities are, what role I will be giving them and whether there will be a change in the classroom set-up.

Finally, Voice 21’s Impact Report states: “teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners… is a route to social mobility, empowering all students, not just some, to find their voice to succeed in school and life.” At CEC, we educate for life; oracy is a crucial part of that education. R e f e r e n c e s

Voice 21 References:

Inclusive Oracy: students with SEMH

Supporting quiet students in an Oracy-rich classroom.

Oracy: The State of Speaking in our Schools. Will Millard and Loic Menzies

Voice 21 Impact Report 2016-2021

Kathleen Mcbride – How to Engage the Quiet Student

Other references:

Speak for Change: Final report and recommendations from the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry April 2021

Tower Hamlets Oracy Hub

Alex Quigley: Closing the Reading Gap

Speak for Change: Final report and recommendations from the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry April 2021

Doug Lemov: Teach like a Champion (Jossey Bass 2015) pages 311 – 340

Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan. Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (New York: Guilford Press 2013)

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/voice-21

Susan Cain Ted Talk ‘The Power of Introverts’