Speak Up! Improving Oracy to make a difference – Federation Inset Day Tuesday 4th January 2022

We were delighted to welcome the whole PA Federation together for our online Speak Up! Oracy Inset Day on Tuesday 4^th January 2022.  Torriano Primary School in Camden kicked off our morning sharing their experience of making oracy a priority over the last 5 years, and the impact this has had on their pupils’ confidence, achievement and voice.  At PA we have started our own oracy journey by making oracy a strategic priority, appointing oracy champions in each school, an oracy governor and at this Speak Up! Festival participating in a host of CPD to develop our understanding and skills as practitioners.

Around 300 PA staff attended, including teachers, support staff, pastoral teams, leaders and admin staff.  We had 22 workshops on offer and were fortunate to have many of our own PA staff delivering those sessions as well as external presenters from Voice 21, Torriano, Hackney Speech and Language Team and more – thank you again to all who presented such high quality sessions.

We know our staff really enjoyed coming together again, learning with and from colleagues, and developing our understanding of oracy.  Feedback from the day was really positive, and we are looking forward to taking forward the development of oracy in our schools to make a difference to our pupils:

• ‘Thank you for using the day for joint INSET on such an important topic. It was really good to have the connection between language development and learning re-stated.’
• ‘Excellent training. Lots of great ideas to take away and implement in the classroom straight away’. (Talk in Maths session)
• This was amazing … so many ideas and what natural things can be used to develop language (EYFS session) 

• Great ideas about how to organise debates, from planning to setting up and carrying out. (Introducing debates to the primary classroom session)

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about our full Speak Up! programme or to share your experience of oracy development in your school:  palearning@primaryadvantage.hackney.sch.uk