* Join the Educational Research Forum *
Have your say, earn rewards. Find out more

Supporting schools to define best practice for embedding oracy in the maths classroom

Primary Teachers

Oracy and Talk for Maths

Supporting schools to define best practice for embedding oracy in the maths classroom

Oracy is a key area of the Oxford Mastery Framework. We've joined up with Voice 21, drawing upon their extensive research and experience of working with hundreds of educators, to explore oracy education and how that relates to maths. This led us to create the Talk for Maths benchmarks.

Our shared ambition is that these will help to encourage reflection, conversation and exploration of oracy in maths. They aim to support schools in creating talk-rich maths lessons, and through this, to deepen understanding and help learners grow in confidence.

The benchmarks aim to define excellent practice for oracy in the maths classroom. They have been developed as a practical framework with the aim of establishing a shared understanding for oracy and maths.

High-quality dialogue in maths has the capacity to support students to co-construct knowledge leading to deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and processes. Creating the conditions for effective classroom talk takes time but is time well spent.

Kathleen McBride, Voice 21

Benchmarks to promote oracy in your maths classroom

Purposeful, rich talk tasks are designed to help students explore an idea collaboratively.

Watch: Talk tasks in action with Numicon Essentials

Watch: How reading stories together can
promote explatory talk

Manipulatives and pictorial representations support students to organise their thinking and structure their talk, providing a bridge from the concrete and pictorial to the abstract.

Watch: Using manipulatives as a tool for talk

Talk encourages creativity and curiosity – core skills of a mathematician.

Watch: Connecting classroom talk with being a mathematician

Establishing a school-wide maths vocabulary progression and approach to planning ensures vocabulary is a cross-phase priority.

Watch: Teaching vocabulary explicitly according to a school-wide progression

Share uncertain thinking, communicate misconceptions and use them to deepen understanding and refine thinking.

Watch: Harness uncertainty to develop deeper understanding

Next steps

1. Download the Talk for Maths Benchmarks report [PDF]

This booklet offers top tips and a practical toolkit with actionable ideas on how to implement each benchmark. We know that every school is different. These are guiding principles and should be interpreted to suit each school’s individual context.

2. Watch our FREE webinar

Join Louise Pennington in conversation with Kathleen McBride and Lydia Davison for this ‘Talk for Maths’ webinar, where they discuss why talk in maths lessons is important, what it looks like and how it can be enhanced in your lessons.

3. Tell us what you think

We’d love to hear your feedback on the benchmarks. To let us know your thoughts and how you think they can inform your teaching practice, please complete this short survey.

Solutions for oracy and maths talk

Numicon Essentials

Created with Voice 21, Numicon Essentials offers 100 targeted mastery lessons for Years 1 to 6. All lessons include talk tasks to embed high-quality oracy opportunities and vocabulary teaching.

Stories for Maths

Coming soon, Stories for Maths is a series of maths storybooks from Oxford and White Rose, designed specifically to support the teaching of the primary maths curriculum through engaging stories.

Oxford Mastery Framework

The Oxford Mastery Framework is designed to support you with key areas in your maths mastery curriculum. We have worked with key partners, such as Voice 21, to look at practice and issues in the classroom. Free support, including the Talk for Maths Benchmarks, is designed to promote discussion and exploration of each of the key areas. All research will underpin our publishing to give you reassurance that impactful and coherent pedagogy is built into our Primary Maths resources.