Here are three of our favourite oracy activities to help EYFA and KS1 children develop essential discussion skills.
Being an Early Years teacher in a school that does a lot of oracy can be tough. It’s easy to be envious of the in-depth discussions in classes higher up the school. What can you do when some of the children you teach can’t form questions yet? Or say random things that don’t link to the subject?
At the heart of any discussion is the skill of giving reasons for answers. But even the concept of a reason is difficult for very young children to grasp. So start by using the language you want them to use, and ask, “Who’s got a because?” And use the activities below as your way in!
Dinner with a witch, or a frog for dinner?
A colourful “would you rather” resource accessible to the youngest children, with teaching notes that suggest how you can use the exercise as a springboard for discussion.
Would You Rather Be A Bee Than A Chicken?
Each child has a card. They then pair up, and decide which creature they would prefer to be, and why. Then they swap cards and swap partners, so that they end up making a series of different judgements.
You can use the same set of cards in other ways to begin to explore concepts that are important in thinking, such as similarity, difference, relationship.
Kindness Story: The Squirrel and the Magpie
An activity that went especially well with a Year 2 class at Jason’s annual visit to Stivichall School. It's an application of “Sides Then Selves”, getting the class to first argue from two given points of view, and then to switch to deciding what they themselves think.
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