Abstract

What are the spoken language skills that schools should be helping children to develop? How can teachers monitor and assess these skills in the classroom?

We will report on a project funded by the Educational Endowment Fund (EEF) in which we developed a toolkit for teachers to use in classrooms in England to assess children’s oracy. The aim was to enable teachers to assess students’ skills in using spoken English, across a range of settings, as they arrive in secondary school at the age of 11, at the end of the school year and – through Assessment for Learning (AfL) tasks – throughout the year.

The assessment scheme is grounded in a skills framework for oracy which we developed through the project. We trialled the tasks and assessment schemes with a sample of children in three schools, including School 21 in Stratford, East London, which was our principal partner in the project; we will report on the results of these trials, showing skills ratings, video and interview data.