Best Practice

Oracy in the primary school maths classroom

Literacy & English Curriculum Pedagogy Quality First Teaching
Everyone is talking about oracy and teaching the vital skills of speech, discussion, and conversation. In this article, Lydia Davison considers what this might look like in the primary school maths classroom
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How do we know what children think or understand if we can’t hear their voices?

As teachers and school leaders, conversations often focus on what a primary classroom should “look like”. When I think back to my teaching training or lesson observations, there were a number of common questions:

  • What resources will you have on the table for the children to use?
  • How will you use working walls and classroom displays?
  • What independent work will you set for the children and how will this be adapted?

While these are all valid and have their rightful place, momentum seems to have built, particularly recently, around what a primary classroom “sounds like”.

So, why now? The most common category of need for pupils on SEN support are speech, language, and communication needs – 25.6% – according to government figures (DfE, 2024). And, as we know, fluency in the English language is an essential foundation for success in all subjects.

The term “oracy”, which the charity Voice 21 defines as “the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language”, is on many educators' lips right now and Voice 21 and Oxford University Press’s recent publication, Talk for Maths Benchmarks (2024), encapsulates the strategies needed to create a culture of rich talk and dialogue in a maths classroom.

 

Why is oracy in maths important?

As educators, we know that pupils can sometimes feel anxious about mathematics.

If we stop to consider the culture of a maths classroom, high-quality oracy provision steps onto centre stage. Indeed, maths is a subject rich in language and vocabulary – vocabulary which is woven into a curriculum of complex concepts and abstract ideas.

It is crucial that we create opportunities for subject-specific talk in maths, otherwise developing knowledge will “remain static and unused” (Resnick et al, 2018).

Moreover, concepts will often remain puzzling, abstract and inaccessible for many children. Giving them opportunities to explore, discuss, prove, disprove, and engage collaboratively in that “messy talk” (where perfection or precise articulation are not the primary goal), can help to initially unlock those key mathematical concepts for children.

Ultimately, it is often moments of dialogue which can enable teachers to truly hear what the children understand – or perhaps more importantly, do not yet understand.

Engaging children in talk in a maths classroom not only builds the subject identity of maths, but builds their own identity as mathematicians, too.

 

How can teachers incorporate oracy into their maths classrooms?

It is key not to view oracy as something which is done in the classroom; dispel any urge to announce: “It’s time for oracy!”

Instead, it is a core ingredient of the classroom culture. Having said that, it should not then be assumed that developing a culture of oracy means that it appears overnight without any forward-thinking, time or planning.

A common phrase you will hear in most classrooms is “turn and talk to your partner”, and while this is a quick, effective and easy strategy to get children talking to each other, it is not always clear for children (or teachers) what the purpose of this talk is – or the quality of the talk that will be taking place – or whether the teacher will even get the desired responses from the children at all. Consider the following five steps.

  1. In the planning stage, teachers can purposefully design opportunities for exploratory talk. From the out-set, decide on the purpose of the talk – is it to retrieve prior knowledge, rehearse key vocabulary, or to unpick and address misconceptions? From there, they can select and design a question or task that will engage the children but also scaffold and support them, so that the talk is meaningful. This may be a “summariser bullseye” or a “which one does not belong/odd-one-out” scenario.
  2. Instead of insisting on the precision of mathematical vocabulary at the start, teachers can encourage children to express their thinking, engage in that “messy talk”, and speak in a safe, free and collaborative space.
  3. As the experts, teachers can demonstrate, model, and narrate their metacognition throughout. Teachers can deliberately teach those more technical or subject-specific Tier 2 and Tier 3 words, as part of their direct instruction. This should then be followed up with lots of guided practice and opportunities for children to see, hear and use the new subject-specific language in context.
  4. Teachers can prompt thinking and verbal reasoning with questioning to harness and unpick any misconceptions. Encouraging critical thinking and challenging children’s ideas helps to build children’s mathematical understanding and establish a real culture of being mathematicians in the classroom.
  5. Teachers can reflect on the groupings in their classroom. Are they working? Change the routine partner talk for a different type of grouping (Voice 21 groupings are a great go-to for different strategies – see further information). Trios is one of my favourites: it incorporates a listener in the group, whose role is to critique and summarise the discussion.

 

What techniques do I use to incorporate oracy in maths lessons?

My key tool for talk in maths lessons is always the use of manipulatives. The Education Endowment Foundation recommends the use of manipulatives and representation up to key stage 3 “to help pupils engage with mathematical ideas” (Henderson et al, 2017; see also Cox, 2021).

When they are effectively matched to mathematical concepts, my experience is that they engage all learners in the classroom. In terms of supporting talk, by their very nature, they encourage interaction and dialogue between learners.

The significance of moving a single base 10 cube from one place value column to another, placing a peg into a Numicon piece to represent one more part of a whole, every single interaction naturally promotes language and conversation.

The purposeful use of manipulatives can be the vehicle for some children to even begin to express themselves in maths, while allowing others to challenge, prove and disprove their thinking or the thinking of others. Particularly in the initial phases of a sequence of learning in maths, manipulatives are my power play to exercise exploratory talk.

 

The Talk for Maths benchmarks

Oxford University Press and Voice 21 have provided five core Talk for Maths Benchmarks to help you move everyday teaching practice towards a discussion-rich maths culture. They can be used by individual teachers or as part of whole-school development in maths. The benchmarks are:

  1. Plan frequent exploratory talk opportunities.
  2. Use manipulatives as a tool for talk.
  3. Connect classroom talk with being a mathematician.
  4. Teach vocabulary explicitly, according to a school-wide progression.
  5. Harness uncertainty to develop deeper understanding.

The benchmarks include examples of teaching in QR code form so teachers can watch video examples in real classrooms. Teachers can download more information on the benchmarks and associated resources from the OUP website (see further information).

 

The impact of a culture of oracy in maths?

The most notable difference has been the positive shift in children’s enjoyment and confidence in their understanding in maths. Children can converse in discussions, reason with each other and explain their thinking – even if they have made a mistake.

It is particularly impactful with those more reserved children who are then able to say why they are unsure or where their understanding has perhaps taken a wrong turn. Those are the golden moments which push learning forward and prevent those seemingly small misconceptions from settling and layering up over time.

Finally, children empowered by language in mathematics become confident enough to challenge what has been offered already in discussions. In my experience, that is where the real excitement in maths lessons happens.

 

What advice would I give to teachers?

The best advice I could give to teachers, particularly early career teachers, is to spend the time to build and nurture the culture of talk in their maths classroom.

The confident, technically articulate and mathematical explanations are like the icing on the top of the cake, but this cannot exist without the cake itself.

The core ingredients needed for a beautiful bake include careful planning and task design, purposeful opportunities for exploratory talk, and deliberate groupings, to name just a few.

Teaching primary mathematics shouldn’t be about how many questions a child can work through in their book, working silently to demonstrate their focus and concentration.

Do not be fooled by a quiet maths classroom – how do you really know that all of the children are learning and understanding if you cannot hear their voices?

  • Lydia Davison is assistant headteacher responsible for raising standards in teaching and learning at Kensington Avenue Primary School in Surrey. She was a maths lead at her previous schools and champions the adoption and use of manipulatives across the teaching of mathematics from nursery to year 6. She currently works as a lead author for oracy on Numicon Essentials for Oxford University Press. She is also a qualified instructional coach. Read her blog via https://daivsonmiss.wordpress.com/ and follow her on X @DavisonMiss.

 

Further information & resources

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