How Schools Use It | Oracy Spark

How Schools Use Oracy Spark

Oracy Spark is designed to make high-quality classroom talk easy to build into the school day — without adding to teachers’ planning workload.

At the heart of Oracy Spark are our Weekly Sparks: ready-to-use discussion prompts for each day of the week, with age-appropriate Spark Sentence Stems (Spark Starters) to help every child join the conversation.

Teachers can simply open the week’s Sparks, display the prompt and get children talking.

Build Oracy Into the School Day

Schools can use Oracy Spark in lots of different ways:

Morning Starters
Begin the day with a purposeful conversation that gets children thinking, speaking and listening.

Transition Times
Use a quick Spark after lunch, between lessons or whenever the class needs to refocus and reconnect.

Circle Time & Wellbeing
Our prompts provide a natural starting point for conversations around feelings, relationships, confidence, kindness and wellbeing.

Speaking & Listening Practice
Give children regular opportunities to share ideas, explain their thinking, respond to others and justify their opinions.

Vocabulary Development
Age-appropriate sentence stems support children in structuring their responses and gradually developing richer spoken language.

Across the Curriculum
Oracy doesn't have to sit separately from the curriculum. Teachers can use the Spark Generator to create discussion prompts linked to a subject, topic or question they are already teaching.

Take the Conversation Further

Sometimes two minutes of talk is exactly what you need. Sometimes a great discussion deserves to go further.

That's why our Weekly Sparks also include Talk Some More — additional questions that help teachers extend the conversation, explore different viewpoints and encourage deeper thinking.

A Spark might be used for a quick 2–5 minute discussion, developed into a longer class conversation, or used as the starting point for writing, debate or wider curriculum work.

Create Your Own Sparks

Members can also use the Spark Generator to create their own age-appropriate discussion Sparks in seconds.

Choose the year group, subject and what you'd like children to discuss, and Oracy Spark will create a ready-to-use Spark with supporting sentence stems and follow-up questions.

It means teachers can bring purposeful talk into almost any lesson without having to create the discussion materials themselves.

A Consistent Approach Across School

Oracy Spark can be used across different year groups while maintaining a familiar whole-school approach.

Children encounter the same simple routines as they move through school, while the prompts, sentence stems and level of discussion are appropriate for their age.

Schools can use Oracy Spark:

on interactive whiteboards
during registration or morning work
in curriculum lessons
during circle time and wellbeing sessions
with intervention or small groups
for assemblies or wider school discussions
as part of personal development and oracy provision

Small-group support and interventions

Oracy Spark isn’t just for whole-class use. Teaching Assistants can use the weekly Sparks with small groups too — simply open the slides on another device for a focused speaking and listening activity.

Staff can also use the Spark Generator to create additional prompts and sentence stems tailored to a particular group, topic or area of need.

This works nicely for:

small-group interventions
vocabulary and language development
confidence with speaking
pre-teaching and discussion practice
additional opportunities for pupils who benefit from more structured talk

Ready When Teachers Need It

Members can access their Weekly Sparks, previous resources and the Spark Generator through the Oracy Spark Member Hub.

New and improved Weekly Sparks are released by the end of the previous week, ready for the following week, making it easy for teachers to see what's coming and use them whenever they fit best.

No printing. No lengthy planning. No extra resource preparation.