A guest post by Sharon Gray (Head of English and Oracy at Coventry Academy Alternative Provision)

Before we dive in to our this week’s brilliant guest blog, a quick reminder that we are currently recruiting for two Oracy Cambridge programmes:

1. IMPLEMENTING ORACY 2027

A 6-month programme for teachers, oracy leads and school/trust leaders. Online and face-to-face (4 sessions are at Hughes Hall in Cambridge). Early bird ends September 30th, and places are filling up fast!

 

Check out these testimonials from the first (2026) cohort:

 

See here for more details, or contact Dr James Mannion here.

2. DIGGING DEEPER INTO EDUCATIONAL DIALOGUE

This one is a year-long inquiry into your own classroom. It’s entirely online – six 2h sessions plus approximately 18h independent study time. Runs Oct 2026 to Jun 2027.

Neil Phillipson, one of the course facilitators, has recorded a short video explaining more:

 

See here for more details, or contact Neil here.

OK, lets dive in to this week’s guest blog post!

How the power of voice, performance and authentic relationships has transformed the lives of secondary students excluded from mainstream school

A guest post by Sharon Gray (Head of English and Oracy at Coventry Academy Alternative Provision)

Dead eyes. Head on table, no voice: a year eleven just months before their GCSEs.

This is often what I see on day one with a new student at Coventry Alternative Provision Academy, where I am Head of English and Oracy. Our secondary AP school provides an inclusive, creative education for students who have been excluded from mainstream school.

As part of Solihull Multi-Academy Trust, we work collaboratively with Coventry City Council to provide 120 places across two sites for the most vulnerable young people in the city. Our key focus is on engagement through oracy, performance and music. We have been closely supported by Voice 21 on our oracy journey.

Many of our students hold a deep sense of injustice.

‘Why have I never been on holiday or left Coventry?

‘Why haven’t I got a dad?’

‘Why am I in care?’

‘Why have I seen so much domestic violence?’

‘Why do I meet weekly with a social worker?’

‘Why do teachers not see who I really am?’

Enabling students to find their true voice is the key to channelling their rage, unlocking their talent and creative potential. My job is to reanimate them, allow them to believe in themselves and to feel safe and included in school life – often for the first time in their lives.

This process starts with my classroom. It is a popular place for students with puppets, antique dolls, big hardback books on Gucci and Eminem and lots of their artwork. There’s always a stash of biscuits on offer with lemon sherbet sweets (a universal favourite) and hot chocolate.

After each lesson, I wipe the tables and ensure everything is in place to reset the room as in a good hotel – attention to detail is key as this place is where the relationships begin. The short, one-line conversations, the silence or the stream of consciousness babble. It’s all valid and it’s all authentic.

They are fearful of school, their new classmates and teachers. Slowly we show them an alternative way school can be; a place where adults speak to students with respectful kindness, allowing each student to feel valued, have space to breathe and think deeply.

The next stage involves asking each student what they are genuinely interested in. Is it dirt bikes, clothes, pets, cookery, beauty or music? Then the drill down. Which type of bike, which musician, what exact dish – Nan’s shepherd’s pie or Nandos?

This is recorded in their portfolio along with bespoke information such as ‘Do not mention the word ‘dad’ to Paul*. He is in prison for extensive DV (domestic violence)’ or ‘Avoid asking Lexi about her sister who has just been taken into care’. After a short time, their eyes start to brighten and their posture starts to convey more confidence.

Oracy enables students to put their dreams and nightmare into words. It enables them to verbalise trauma, take it out of their body and up into the air, removing toxicity from their system. Words shape visions and concepts; articulate our past, present and future.

As Neil Mercer states: ‘Words can be used to declare war or offer peace; they can pronounce someone guilty or innocent.’ I have always used performance, art and music to provide literary and historical context, along with props and theatre rehearsal room techniques from my training with the RSC Schools Associate programme. It’s my job to plunder students’ memory banks and subconscious minds, enabling them to speak and write with authenticity, confidence and clarity.

Listening to students is critical. We can’t pretend to hear or give students a cursory nod or glance. They have often been ignored at school and home. Not feeling heard or validated, they often just close up or react with anger.

In our English team, we try to give as much time/space to each student and adapt our speech, content and tone to each individual. For example, a quiet student who you know loves her pet cat will respond well to, ‘Morning Lexi, have a good weekend? How was Lola in this heat? Does she stay inside or play in the garden with you?’

This starts a conversation of trust and ease, showing I know about Lexi’s life and care about how she is doing at home. The more golden coins of trust and respect you can put in the relationship bank, the more profitable the relationship.

Conversely, a loud, sociable and popular student will respond to a question such as: ‘Hi Archie, like your new trainers, I bet they’ve seen some miles this weekend.’ In this case, humour and banter keeps the energy and pace of the relationship going.

The core elements of successful relationship talk are genuine interest, trust, respect, praise, humour, pace and appropriate tone. Any signs of being dismissed or being patronised are serious red flags for our students and they will often react negatively very quickly.

Speaking to them with equilibrium and kindness is key. Like all people, they want you to see them for who they are, not just as a student within a classroom. I feel my job is to create a space where they can speak and act with ease and start to show their latent, creative talents whether this be through wit, writing, performing or just being a decent friend to classmates. Drawing out positives is a cathartic experience for our students and helps greatly to slay the nightmares and anger demons of rage and injustice.

A number of oracy-rich strategies and approaches are particularly relevant and supportive for our students in finding their authentic voices, and reconnecting with their education:

Film Trailer Talk

• Use a film trailer as an audiovisual backdrop for discussion and prediction. For example, I use the trailer for the Disney film ‘Maleficent’ to model prefixes such as ‘Mal’ and also key gothic techniques. Students are asked to recall words which begin with ‘Mal’ e.g. ‘Malpractice’, ‘Malfunction.’
• Play the whole trailer and discuss key gothic settings and colour scapes. Play it again and stop it about every 15 seconds. One student is given the role as presenter, one as a scribe on the flipchart and one the interviewee. The interviewer asks questions about each scene using his/her own questions, backed up with a prompt sheet. The responses are written on the flipchart as a record for their books (we take photos and print them off – this is how most of our oracy responses are recorded).
• Student response: I didn’t know mal meant bad. Now I get why the film is called this. I can use mal words with more confidence now and be able to recognise them in my English GCSE exam if they come up.

Painterly Prompts

• Use a painting with paint chart colour adjectives to discuss and create the opening to a GCSE coursework story based around the image or their own interpretation.
• Source paint charts from the local DIY shop to use as colour adjectives/story telling prompts. Hand them out and show on the interactive whiteboard (IWB) a very vivid image for the lesson context e.g. ‘Tiger in a Tropical Storm’ by Henri Rousseau. Discuss the painting (with its context of dense, jungle foliage and the tiger’s surreal expression) using the 5 x W’s sheet for prompts – Who, What, Where, When, Why. Students are seated in a circle and answer in turn as a scribe records their responses on a flipchart.
  • ‘Who was the tiger looking at?’
  • ‘What was he doing there?’
  • ‘Where is the jungle, which country, specifically where in that country?’
  • ‘When do you think this was painted and what makes you think that?’
  • ‘Why is the tiger looking so menacing? Why would he do this?’
• Student response: These colours have mad names, I love them. I’m definitely using them in my GCSE coursework piece.

Food Focus

• Use food visuals to engage new students with an accessible and universal talk topic.
• Display different images of world food on the IWB. Discuss their origin and ingredients. Ask about their favourite food as the students feel no pressure and are happy to talk about the positive aspects of their lives.
• Bring in real takeaway menus or display on the board. Discuss a perfect meal.
• We discuss which takeaways are best and I’ll put a large Chinese takeaway menu on the IWB and we’ll choose our ideal meal (this can be used as an effective mental maths lesson as well!) This activity produces a conversation, whether short or long and gives the student and myself a chance to connect on neutral ground.
• Student response: I didn’t want to come here as I thought there’d be lots of fighting but the teachers are really cool and they care about what you think. I can speak in class now without people judging me.

Retuning voices

• Experiment with voice variation and gain oracy confidence – a reworking of Topsy Page and Alan Howe’s oracy technique ‘Retune your Voice.’
• Using a backing track, one of the students performs a short, published piece (could be a song lyric, poem) whilst a second student acts as director, checking on pace, volume and tone of speech. Record this on an ipad and play it back to check that the student is happy with it. Others suggest improvements in pace, tone, projection.
• Compare this to a professional recording (for example, the classic opening of ‘Under Milkwood’ by Richard Burton) which offers high quality modelling.
• Note: This approach was used to prepare for the level 2 English Speaking Board exams for the ‘Speech to Perform’ qualification where students achieved a 100% pass rate.

Code Switch Charm – Newsdesk

• Most of the students speak in a Coventry vernacular style yet can code switch to a more formal style if we have visitors or are being recorded in an interview.
• Provide a blend of high quality text genres and quality magazine journalism to introduce new vocabulary, worlds and concepts.
• One student is a news presenter seated at a desk with a microphone and a backdrop of the story displayed on the IWB behind. After practising reading the article as a whole class in short paragraphs, the ‘presenter’ reads out the article in a formal style. Props such as a formal tie/jacket can be added. The performance can be filmed and replayed.
• The students start to own the text, feel the words and visualise the story. This empowers them to extend their vocabulary speak with more formally with confidence.

Shakespeare Shakeup

Here is an example of a recent English lesson using several oracy strategies to consider how Macbeth descends from ‘noble warrior’ to being ‘I am in blood, stepped in so far’, in preparation for a GCSE written task:

• Show a short video of the Omaha Beach scene from the film ‘Saving Private Ryan’; the last 2 minutes show the visceral horror of war.
• Students discuss Macbeth’s bravery on the battlefield by using ‘Save the last word for me’ oracy technique included in ’100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Oracy’. In trios, each student chooses a key quote about bravery (such as the Captain’s ‘Brave Macbeth…disdaining fortune with his brandish’d steel’). Student A reads out their quote with no further commentary. Student B and C discuss their views and finally student A has the ‘last word’ or judgement on the statement.
• Bring out a large bowl of homemade ‘prop blood’ and ask a volunteer to dip their hands deep into it for the visual and visceral experience. Students interview the blood-stained student using a script based on the scenes from Macbeth in a journalistic genre. Visual hooks are provided with each quote as prompts to facilitate what Alex Quigley describes as ‘Actively foregrounding strategies to remember the big picture of the text.’ For example: ‘Macbeth, do you think Neptune’s ocean will wash the blood from your hands?’ ‘Why did your wife say, ‘Make thick my blood?’ ‘Why did you say your hand will make ‘the multitudinous seas incarnadine?’
• All learning feeds into the next lesson which is a written piece on Macbeth’s moral descent.

Positive Impact of Oracy

Oracy, woven into a creative curriculum of performance, music and media, has been transformative within our school, especially for year 10 and 11 students. As one of our year eleven students stated in our half-termly audio recorded student voice:

’I hated English at mainstream. They always asked me to read aloud and didn’t know I had dyslexia, so I was always shown up and went mad. My English teachers at Coventry Academy know me really well and give me a lot of time in small groups. They explain all the difficult words and how to say them first. They never show me up and just praise me to build my confidence. I always volunteer to read aloud in English now and I performed live at The Belgrade Theatre in April, doing Midsummer Night’s Dream and my own rap as Lysander. I would never have sat any exams at mainstream but have taken all my GCSEs here.’

References

Mercer, N. (2025). Oracy – The Transformative Power of Finding your Voice. London. Bodley Head.

Page, T. and Howe, A. (2026). 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Oracy. London. Bloomsbury Education.

Quigley, A. (2020). Closing the Reading Gap. London. Routledge.

Didau, D. (2014). The Secret of Literacy. Wales. Independent Thinking Press.

* All student names have been changed in this article.