Create an Oracy Curriculum

An oracy education is essential for all students to thrive – in school and beyond. It enables students to develop subject knowledge, grow their confidence and recognise their voice matters. Yet only through the curriculum can we ensure every child benefits from these opportunities.

In Create an Oracy Curriculum, Amy Gaunt and Alice Stott provide a practical, research-informed guide for teachers and school leaders who want to make oracy a meaningful part of their students’ learning journey. It shows how schools can move beyond isolated activities to design a curriculum for oracy that enables every young person to find their voice.

As oracy takes its place at the heart of the curriculum, this book provides the practical guidance schools need to make it a reality.

Everyone’s now talking about oracy – why it matters for children, teachers and society.
But now comes the bigger challenge – how we translate aspiration into action. That’s precisely what Amy Gaunt and Alice Stott help us to do in their principled, evidence-driven, practical new book, Create an Oracy Curriculum. Experts in the oracy field, Amy and Alice demonstrate that it’s time to stop talking about oracy and make it work for the benefit of every child from every background. Step-by-step, that’s precisely what this book does.
Geoff Barton, CBE Chair, The Oracy Education Commission

Here is a book that really moves the oracy conversation forwards. Drawing on many years of oracy work with schools, the authors provide a route map for creating and embedding a meaningful oracy curriculum. All of the book’s principles are brought to life through vivid examples and testimony from real schools and teachers, making it the ideal guide for anyone seeking to implement oracy in a coherent, principled and sustainable way.
Rupert Knight, University of Nottingham. Author of Classroom Talk and Classroom Talk in Practice.

A wonderful resource for curriculum-makers seizing the opportunity to place oracy at the heart of pedagogy. Evidence-informed practice is drawn from a multitude of authentic case-studies. We are shown not only what is currently working for schools and colleges, but also through prompts and practical suggestions we are encouraged towards future development and innovation in our own context.
Dame Alison Peacock DL, Chief Executive, Chartered College of Teaching

Create an Oracy Curriculum is absolutely superb book setting out a blueprint for bringing oracy to life in any school or college. There’s plenty of empassioned advocacy for the vital role oracy has to play in learning across the curriculum but refreshingly, this book shows exactly how that can be done with clear guidance, strong frameworks and countless case studies of oracy in action in every kind of setting. The curriculum section is brilliant, weaving together ideas about oracy in authentic contexts in every subject and tackling complex issues around progression and linguistic diversity. The final section is a fabulously clear guide for leaders seeking to make oracy a feature of school life for all their students. Create an Oracy Curriculum achieves the ultimate goal of any good education book – it simultaneously sets out a vision whilst remaining grounded in realities; it’s deeply practical but also completely inspiring.
Tom Sherrington