Interesting that the teachers aren’t measuring the things specific to oracy - eg confidence, audibility, pace, posture. Nor does response to questioning seem to have been included in the task.
Thanks for an interesting read. As a primary teacher I hugely valued oracy. Many very young children were able to express themselves in sophisticated ways well before they could do so in writing so taking note of oracy is important. I always included presentations as part of the curriculum and was often amazed at how kids who maybe struggled with writing could shine. Memorable was a Year 6 boy who chose to talk about his hobby, which was fishing. He brought his gear with him and spoke knowledgeably on the subject for the allocated time. The rest of the class were enthralled. I think one of the important criteria I'd add would be an awareness of audience. It's as important in oracy as in writing. I'm a spoken radio junkie and despair of the clichéd jabber that so many speakers, whether politicians, celebrities or presenters, use. Teachers might mark kids down for the repetitive use of 'so' or 'like' but adults pepper their speech with it even on the hallowed BBC. Another thought. I wonder might the results have been different if the students had been allowed a free choice of subject matter .
When I read the title, I did wonder if this post was going to be about the top third of pupils. As an outsider, my impression is that the system is already geared heavily to helping weaker pupils, rather than stretching the stronger ones - the vast sums being spent on SEND being only the most expensive example.
The correlation between oracy and written work is interesting. I know that a correlation coefficient of over 0.4 in social research is pretty high, but given the criteria the markers seem to have used - more or less what you'd use to mark written work as well - one might have expected the correlation to be even higher. That suggests two things to me:
1) Should the criteria for assessing oracy give more weight to other factors, such as fluency and pronunciation? I don't know what the formal criteria are and they may do this already.
2) Even with all assessors supposedly applying the same marking criteria, oracy is something that's inherently prone to subjective responses. Could a trained AI assess the same recordings gathered in this research to see how its marks would compare with the teachers'? I suspect that the resulting correlation coefficient with written work would be higher because AI would be more "reliable" (in the technical sense of being less prone to rating error).
Thanks for this. Love the detail and examples. Super interesting.
Interesting that the teachers aren’t measuring the things specific to oracy - eg confidence, audibility, pace, posture. Nor does response to questioning seem to have been included in the task.
Thanks for an interesting read. As a primary teacher I hugely valued oracy. Many very young children were able to express themselves in sophisticated ways well before they could do so in writing so taking note of oracy is important. I always included presentations as part of the curriculum and was often amazed at how kids who maybe struggled with writing could shine. Memorable was a Year 6 boy who chose to talk about his hobby, which was fishing. He brought his gear with him and spoke knowledgeably on the subject for the allocated time. The rest of the class were enthralled. I think one of the important criteria I'd add would be an awareness of audience. It's as important in oracy as in writing. I'm a spoken radio junkie and despair of the clichéd jabber that so many speakers, whether politicians, celebrities or presenters, use. Teachers might mark kids down for the repetitive use of 'so' or 'like' but adults pepper their speech with it even on the hallowed BBC. Another thought. I wonder might the results have been different if the students had been allowed a free choice of subject matter .
When I read the title, I did wonder if this post was going to be about the top third of pupils. As an outsider, my impression is that the system is already geared heavily to helping weaker pupils, rather than stretching the stronger ones - the vast sums being spent on SEND being only the most expensive example.
The correlation between oracy and written work is interesting. I know that a correlation coefficient of over 0.4 in social research is pretty high, but given the criteria the markers seem to have used - more or less what you'd use to mark written work as well - one might have expected the correlation to be even higher. That suggests two things to me:
1) Should the criteria for assessing oracy give more weight to other factors, such as fluency and pronunciation? I don't know what the formal criteria are and they may do this already.
2) Even with all assessors supposedly applying the same marking criteria, oracy is something that's inherently prone to subjective responses. Could a trained AI assess the same recordings gathered in this research to see how its marks would compare with the teachers'? I suspect that the resulting correlation coefficient with written work would be higher because AI would be more "reliable" (in the technical sense of being less prone to rating error).