Today in Year 6, we rounded off our unit on Macbeth with an oracy-focused lesson centred on a concept cartoon exploring the question: Is Macbeth a good person? The cartoon presented a range of viewpoints about Macbeth’s actions and motivations, encouraging the children to evaluate different perspectives and justify their opinions using evidence from the text.
The children used their talk tokens to support balanced participation and to encourage purposeful discussion. This helped ensure that everyone contributed thoughtfully to their group conversations. During the discussions, some children took on the role of silent summarisers, carefully listening to the dialogue, gathering key points and identifying evidence from the play. They later shared these summaries with the class, helping to draw together the different ideas that had emerged.
The lesson placed a strong emphasis on developing spoken language skills, including building on others’ ideas, respectfully challenging viewpoints, and supporting opinions with textual evidence. By the end of the session, the children demonstrated a deeper understanding of Macbeth’s character, recognising the complexity of his choices and debating whether his ambition, guilt and manipulation by others affect how we judge him as a person.
