There’s a moment in every classroom when you ask a perfectly reasonable question and 30 young faces stare back at you like goldfish at feeding time; mouths slightly open, eyes glazed.  Cue the familiar teacher monologue: “Come on, you guys must know this…” Five awkward seconds later, you roll your eyes and start answering your own question (again). Welcome to life before oracy. Now, I know you might be about to click off this article, thinking 'here we go again, another post about speaking and listening' but this is no mere call to action to instruct your pupils to 'talk more'. So often, we misinterpret what oracy actually is and we completely underestimate how important it is in our classrooms and beyond. Think of oracy as the lost sibling of literacy and numeracy ; it's the “third wheel” at the education family reunion. Yes, it’s all about speaking well: being able to express ideas clearly, reason aloud and even disagree without declaring verbal war but it is also...