Oracy in the science classroom

By Peter Munroe

Oracy is a hot topic in education at the moment, but how does it fit in the busy science curriculum and how can science teachers embed talk to promote learning?

Defining oracy

With oracy we harness the power of talk, however there is a misconception that it is just about long debates and presentations. Whilst these can be great, they can have limited value in an overcrowded science curriculum. By digging into the meaning of oracy a little deeper, we can see how it really enriches science learning. The Oracy Education Commission helpfully defines oracy as “Articulating ideas, developing understanding and engaging with others through speaking, listening and communication”. This means that oracy doesn’t just support students to communicate ideas like a scientist, it actually helps to build understanding. When students use high quality talk to co-construct answers to difficult problems there can be a lot of lightbulb moments in lessons!

Strategies for oracy in science

Oracy strategies don't need to be complex - many are similar to the tools we already use for promoting literacy. By telling students to put down their pens and just use dialogue, we give them a lot more freedom to think out loud and adapt their own ideas as they speak. They can then put pen to paper with a much better formed scientific idea.

Here are some quick ideas for oracy activities that you can try in your classroom:

Simple discussion starters

Lots of science lessons involve paired talk, but students can find it challenging to start the conversation, or quickly go off topic. Displaying simple sentence stems is not groundbreaking, but it really works. Students could be given a statement to discuss like “Water is a good conductor” and then take turns to use a different sentence stem. Try using reasoning and building sentence starters like those in the table below:

Discussions using the Frayer Model

This well-established thinking tool is often used as a written exercise in lessons but works brilliantly as a quick discussion scaffold.

Students are given a key word or term, and they then discuss the definition, characteristics, examples and non-examples. Through talk, they can refine their definition or explore non-examples in a way that doesn’t often happen in a written task. This can be applied to almost any key word or idea in science, but is great at Key Stage 3, a time where science students are being introduced to a huge number of new tier 3 terms. The example below shows how you could use the Freyer model to guide a discussion about the meaning of the term "hydrocarbon":

Premade presentations

A big part of being a scientist is presenting complex ideas to other people. Class presentations can be very time consuming, with students getting bogged down in choosing the perfect font. They often don’t think about what to say or how to say it.

Instead, provide students with 3 or 4 simple pre-made slides that they cannot change. Their job is to write a script to accompany the slides, and then practise it in small groups before presenting to the class. This shifts the focus onto the talk and not the visuals. I’ve often used this with topics about climate change, which is an area students may well want to speak about outside the classroom.

How to overcome the challenges of oracy in science

Oracy isn’t always easy in science. Whilst other subjects have a culture of discussion, this isn’t always the case in science lessons. Teachers can worry about the challenges of using talk, but these can be overcome.

Students going off topic

As soon as you introduce talking tasks, you introduce the opportunity for students to go off topic. Whilst this is always a risk, it can be reduced by using scaffolds and setting a clear outcome for a talk activity. For example, you could say “By the end of this discussion, I want you to be able to suggest three properties of sodium fluoride”.

Student anxiety about speaking

Many students experience anxiety about speaking in front of their peers, something that   has become more common since the pandemic. Overcoming this is tough, but it can help to share your own worries about speaking. Most teachers, including myself, love talking in front of a class but might freeze up if they have to present to other staff. Coming alongside nervous students and prompting their discussions as you circulate the room can be a big help too.

Time constraints of oracy

For me, this was the biggest barrier to using oracy in my lessons. Whilst I saw its value, I felt like I simply didn’t have time to shoe-horn discussion activities into lessons. Here we need to go back to the Oracy Commission’s definition of oracy as something that can develop understanding and even accelerate it. If we view talk as a bolt-on activity, it won’t fit, however if we see that oracy is a really positive tool for understanding, it actually saves time. For example, now when I teach electrolysis, I spend less time explaining the content, and more time on structured discussions about where the ions might move and why. I’ve found that this means that students grasp this abstract topic much faster.

What next?

Using oracy effectively in science can take time to embed, however once you start trying these strategies you will find that you can easily adapt them for different classes. It can be amazing to see students take big steps forward in their learning through talk.

Author Bio

Peter Munroe is Head of Chemistry at a state school in Sussex. He writes and speaks about oracy in STEM and researches the role of talk in the science classroom.