The Rights of the Talker

As we await the DFE’s curriculum and assessment review we still don’t know if there will be new guidance on cross curricular Oracy, however the issue has been gaining traction since the Oracy Education Commission’s report ‘We need to talk’ was published this time last year.

At Speech Bubbles we advocate for the most inclusive version of Oracy – one that includes every child and is expansive to include multiple ways of communicating. We contributed a chapter about Speech Bubbles to this book ‘Language, Place and the Body in Childhood Literacies’. The book also included a ‘Manifesto for the rights of the talker’ and I wanted to share it here to see what you think about it?

The child talker has:

• The right to time     

  Both in relation to communicating in the moment and in relation to how they develop

• The right to silence           

  Adults value and respect children's silences as an act of listening

• The right to be listened to         

  Even when it is challenging, inconvenient, or seemingly uninterpretable

• The right to choose how

  With words, with sounds, with bodies, with silence, beyond standard English, with devices, with sign

• The right to move (movement) and gaze

  Language starts in the body – children have the right to move and direct their own gaze

• The right to (not) express oneself

  To communicate thoughts and feelings through movement, gesture and verbalizing, and the right not to express themselves

  Is it something you could endorse? Are there things you would want to challenge or question? Please let me know.