Oracy templates

Our flexible and engaging classroom templates are designed specifically for KS3-5 students, and cover a range of oracy skills. 

With a renewed focus on oracy from Ofsted and the DfE in 2023, spoken language is one of the cornerstones of teaching and learning in the National Curriculum, and key to school improvement.

Using our oracy templates, you'll be able to provide your KS3, GCSE and A-level students with a solid foundation in communication skills that will benefit them throughout their academic and professional lives:

• teach students how to structure their ideas and arguments effectively and coherently

• encourage students to listen actively and respond positively to different points of view

• help students to develop their critical thinking skills

• build confidence in public speaking.

Our templates come with clear teaching instructions and examples, making it easy for you to incorporate them into your lesson plans.

Suitable for small group or whole-class activities, these oracy activities help to develop students’ language skills and their overall confidence in speaking in class.

The oracy templates are customisable, so you can adapt them to suit the needs of your learners, the topics you are teaching, and your teaching context.

Our templates cover a range of skills, from active listening to persuasive speaking, and can be easily adapted to suit different subjects and learning levels. Whatever your subject area or year group, you’ll find ideas for modelling effective group discussion, using different types of questions, including Socratic questions, and helping students to recognise different tones of voice through role-play activities.  

Whether you're a new or experienced teacher, our downloadable whole-school oracy templates will enhance your teaching and benefit your students. These oracy skills are based on an established oracy framework and oracy-based pedagogy from Voice21 and Oracy Cambridge which focuses on four foundational oracy skills for young people: physical, linguistic, cognitive, and social and emotional.

What's included? 

There are 15 printable templates included in this 40-page downloadable pack, ranging from oracy starters and icebreakers to classroom activities and complete lesson ideas to develop students’ speaking skills. 

• Introduction for teachers

• Oracy skills template

• Now you're talking template

• Recognising tone templates

• ABCD template

• Taboo template

• ‘Speak like an expert’ template

• Word dice template

• Fortune teller templates

• Socratic questioning template

• Hexagon templates

• Summarising templates

• Think, pair, share template

• Debating skills templates

• Pick and mix oracy 

• Oracy tracker templates

About the writer

Sarah Davies is a former Head of English and lead examiner, now an assistant headteacher in a MAT and an ECT (Early Career Teacher) Mentor. She's also the author of Talking about Oracy (John Catt, 2020).

For more professional development and support with oracy strategies in your classroom, watch Sarah Davies's CPD webinar, Developing oracy strategies in the classroom, or download her PowerPoint for whole-school staff training or departmental/team or SLT meetings.