Oracy and Drama

Subject Leader: Larissa Brown
Curriculum Team: The Arts

The Pinkwell WHY for Oracy and Drama (The Intent - Vision) 
At Pinkwell we enable all our pupils to communicate articulately, eloquently and confidently across the curriculum with diverse audiences. Good oracy skills are at the heart of Pinkwell’s curriculum intent. Through teaching children to communicate, we intend to give them a voice through which they can connect with the world, ask questions and express their opinions.

The Pinkwell WHAT for Oracy and Drama (The Intent - BIG IDEAS)
To develop the physical aspects of oracy, making effective use of the voice (fluency, pace, tonal variation, clarity of pronunciation and projection) and body language (gestures and postures, facial expressions and eye contact) to communicate with confidence.
To develop confident linguistic knowledge and skills, selecting an appropriate register for the audience and purpose and making accurate use of grammar, effective and appropriate vocabulary choices and sophisticated rhetorical techniques (e.g. humour, irony and mimicry) to engage and audience and convey information or a message.
To develop the cognitive knowledge and skills needed for effective oracy, choosing appropriate content to convey the intention and meaning; building on the views of others; questioning, clarifying and summarising; and reasoning expressing their own views, supporting the views of others and critically examining the views and ideas expressed. 
To develop social and emotional oracy skills, learning to work with others, turn-taking and actively listening and responding appropriately.
To develop confidence in speaking and an awareness of the audience, speaking with self assurance; liveliness and flair and taking into account the level of understanding of the audience.
To develop a knowledge of and ability to use and apply a wide variety of drama techniques, to explore emotional, moral, social and ethical questions across the curriculum, seeing and experiencing them from varied viewpoints and formulating personal opinions and responses.

The Pinkwell HOW for Oracy and Drama (The Implementation)
At Pinkwell Pinkwell oracy and drama are an integral part of project based learning (PBL). The teaching and learning of oracy and drama are integrated into different stages of the PBL learning cycle dependent on the project/public product being worked towards. Though objectives are integrated into a cross-curricular approach, the oracy and drama knowledge objectives are subject specific and specifically taught. The skills objectives span ‘The Arts’ but are specifically taught within an oracy and drama context as appropriate. Public products generally necessitate a high level of oracy demands as pupils have to present their learning to a variety of audiences articulately and with confidence. There are opportunities in other aspects of the curriculum, such as Philosophy for Children (P4C), English and Religious Education (RE) to extend and apply oracy and drama learning.

The Pinkwell SO WHAT for Oracy and Drama (The Impact)
The majority of Pinkwell pupils speak English as an additional language. However, due to the high level of language vocabulary work and the focus on oracy and drama, our pupils are well able to make age appropriate use of the physical aspects of oracy, to demonstrate the cognitive knowledge and skills needed for effective oracy and to speak with confidence, showing an awareness of the audience. Pupils are able to show an understanding of social and emotional oracy skills through turn-taking and active listening and to apply drama techniques in varied situations or learning experiences. Pupils linguistic development, whilst impacted by each individual pupil’s acquisition of English, develops rapidly from their starting point.