Developing Oracy in Young Children – 10 Top Tips

Oracy matters. From expressing our needs to learning how the world works, we depend on our ability to listen, to communicate and to use language to make sense of our feelings and what is happening around us. Finding our voice increases our sense of identity and our self-esteem. It helps us make friends and build relationships and is the foundation for nearly every part of a child’s development. In this blog, we will look at look at how to develop oracy in young children with 10 top tips to take away and try.

Speech and language difficulties on the rise

Nurseries always have some children with delayed language in every year’s new intake. Often this is attributed to poverty and deprivation or speech and language difficulties in the family. Some children only hear simple sentences, commands and a limited vocabulary at home. They miss out on the richness of language and the ability to express shades of meaning. Despite government initiatives and the work of charities during much of the 21^st century, the situation is not improving with Covid making it even worse.

Juliet Leonard, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, at Speech & Language Link, commented: ‘Nurseries are currently feeling that the children don’t have the depth of language, the depth of vocabulary, the understanding of the world, the attention, and the listening skills which perhaps previously they would have had. There are moments where children are expected to sit and gather. It has become increasingly difficult for practitioners to harness their attention for those short periods of time.’

Hints and tips for developing oracy in young children

Here are some hints and tips garnered from practitioners, researchers and speech and language experts to focus children’s attention and to raise the level of communication in your setting:

Tip 1: Get everyone talking

Covid did enormous damage to children’s development. They missed out on going to the shops, spending time in the real world with families and friends, playing in the park, going to nursery and making transitions to the next level of education. It had a profound effect on children’s language development. Make sure that your staff know that they are the most valuable resource for speaking and listening. Children don’t learn to speak or chat from a book or a TV programme. They need people. They need adults they trust, to model sounds, to interpret for them in the early days and to help them to create words and sentences.

 There is so much to attend to in a busy early years setting that we can overlook the value of just talking to the children and listening to their responses. This needs to be a whole setting priority. Provide models and examples for new starters and inexperienced staff.

Tip 2: Make space and time for a chat

Ofsted’s 2021/22 annual report, published in December 2022, commented: ‘During the pandemic, children’s absence from early years settings and delays in routine health checks meant that early speech and language problems were not picked up as they might have been previously. Young children’s communication and language development is still affected. Many providers have noticed delays in some children’s speech and language development and they are making more referrals for specialist help with speech and language than previously.’

Create quiet corners where you can talk one to one with a child. Find a space where you can gather two or three children out of sight of distractions so they can focus on speaking and listening to one another. You need this to help you identify children who are struggling.

Tip 3: Get them round the table

Home life has changed. Families no longer automatically sit round a table to eat. They are more likely to eat different food, at different times, in different rooms. Not every family had long conversations at mealtimes but they did speak. Children heard parents talking to one another and chat between siblings which provided models for their own use of language. Make time for talking at snack time and encourage children to talk to one another and not just to an adult. Make sure they are facing each other and not in a row. Selecting the right furniture such as round tables  that children can chat and collaborate around can be a way to promote conversations. Start up a conversation, draw in two or three children and then sit back and listen. Resist the urge to move on to the next activity.

Tip 4: Watch with children

Families used to watch television together. Some families had a TV in a bedroom but by and large viewing was a communal affair. This provided a focus for conversations and shared knowledge. Now families rarely watch television together in the evening and children may spend as much time in their bedrooms interacting with tablets than talking and playing with other children or adults.

Find a familiar story or suitable content that you have seen before. Children have a short attention span, so plan ‘talking breaks’ to check understanding and to get their opinions. This is a good time to see if they can anticipate what might happen next. Often their versions are more original and entertaining than anything dreamed up by programme makers, so look out for the unexpected presence of unicorns, Peppa Pig and Superman.

Tip 5: Model listening

Show children how to listen by looking and listening carefully yourself. Emphasise the importance of listening when somebody is speaking and, if a child is losing their audience, help them to finish what they are saying. Take children on a listening walk. Record sounds using simple recordable devices both inside and outside the classroom, perhaps a bird singing or a kettle boiling. The recordings can be used for memory games, for question and answer and for promoting close listening. Make listening active just like in a pantomime. Tell children a ‘secret’ word. When you are reading a story, they have to listen out for the word and jump up and down when they hear it.

Tip 6: Put in the pauses

Pause often. Pause when you are talking to babies to encourage them to make eye contact. Pause in the middle of a sentence when talking to older children to check if they are listening. Start a sentence and see if they can finish it. Read a familiar story with a refrain or sing a song such as Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes and pause to let children fill in the missing word. Once you have done this a few times, you can extend this by going round the class so each child fills in a word on their own.

Tip 7: Ask questions

Closed questions with Yes/No answers give children a quick win. We want to move children on to answering more open questions but we don’t want them to feel they are under a spotlight. Start with, ‘I wonder..’ ‘I wonder what Goldilocks was wearing?’ ‘I wonder where the bears went for their walk?’ See if children can get clues from the text and pictures. You could ask: ‘I wonder if it was a warm day when Little Red Riding Hood went into the forest?’ and see if the cloak and the layers of clothes Grandma was wearing strike a chord. This kind of textual awareness develops as they get more experience of books.

Tip 8: Moving on from single words

When children are at the single word stage, model sentences for them to copy. If the child looks at a picture and says ‘Dog!’, extend their response: ‘Yes, it is a dog. It is a small brown dog.’ Ask the child to repeat the sentence and pause long enough for them to process what they have to do. Often, we start talking while they are still thinking. Build up vocabulary by linking words on a common theme, perhaps related to a topic. Make sure it is not all nouns. Witches at Hallowe’en have ‘cauldrons’ and ‘cats’ but they are also ‘spooky’ and ‘scary’. They ‘cackle’ and ‘cast spells’ and ‘fly away on a broomstick’.  Make sure those at home know which words their child is learning for a topic.

Tip 9:  Record the child’s voice

Hearing your own voice is very powerful. It is as fascinating as seeing your own reflection. Get children to repeat words and then encourage them to say sentences of two of three words. Play it back and watch their face light up when they realise it is their voice. They are practising pronunciation in a fun way and many children want to do this activity again and again.

Why not try Recordable Buttons/devices which can have different lengths of recording time depending on the device. These can be found in different colours and have many different features to meet a range of needs.

Tip 10: Guessing games are good

This is quite a sophisticated use of language as it requires a child to talk about something which they cannot see. It is good for descriptive vocabulary: ‘It is soft and furry’; ‘It is cold and squidgy’. One great resource is a Feely Tub. Pop an object in the container with the feely tub concealing the contents, sparking curiosity and encouraging guesswork.

Further blogs on oracy

If you have enjoyed reading this blog on oracy and would like to find out more, then why not click on the link below to take a look at some of our other blogs written by Michael Gardner, Sal McKeown and other teachers and practitioners from a range of nurseries and settings. Click here for further blog posts on oracy.

Explore resources to support oracy