← Speeches & Workshops

Beardstown Institute

A Mighty Wind Speech Blowing through classroom Oct 2006

Toss Koosh. “Tell us about your favorite teacher.” Then…tell us about their teaching style.

Workshop presentations usually follow this pattern: ---The speaker spends the first part of the presentation selling you on an idea ---2nd part explaining it ---Then you make a few notes, nod like it’s a good idea, all the time filtering it through your own curriculum, and generally ignoring most of it by next week.

Premise: 1) The ability to speak well may be the single most important skill taught by any school. Very few schools teach it as a separate course, and then only in high school. It’s the most powerful tool we can give our students… This entire Institute today is based on the premise that knowledge can best be imparted through speech. YOUR TEACHING METHOD is based on the supposition that speech is the best method of communicating.

If you are bored at any point today, it’s probably because you haven’t been actively engaged. You haven’t spoken. 2) Most of your kids come in ready to speak. 3) When kids are engaged, they learn.

Look what happened right here. You’re speaking right off the bat, versus me lecturing or passing out papers.

First…why is it such an important skill? We do it all day long and many of us don’t do it very well. It’s still the first impression you have of a new acquaintance. Today in your workshops you have or will have sized up and made a judgment about your speakers in the first 7 seconds of their presentation according to Psychology Today. 90% how we look .........UNTIL....we open our mouth...then it’s 95% how we speak

Most adolescents…..Vicious Circle: We want to make a great appearance but we can’t until we get more confidence but we can’t get more confidence into we make a better appearance but we ....... The quickest way I know to break out of that dog--chasing-his-own-tail type circle: LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK.

Plato: “A young person puts on mask after another until he finds the one he likes. Do not laugh at him as he goes through this process. Love him until he has the courage to remove all masks and become himself.”

Speech will help the young person find himself. Why? Your math paper tells me very little of what you’re like. Your science quiz has very little room for personality.

I’ll be talking two types of speaking in the classroom: Formal speeches tied directly to subject matter The use of speech as an anticipatory set.

First… The anticipatory set… One of the best ideas to come to education in the last 20 years.. The Anticipatory Set.. an exercise of any kind that get students involved as soon as the bell rings. a lead-in to class work of the day

How do we usually begin class. “Okay! Let’s quiet down!”

“Okay, quiet down!” is a very ineffective anticipatory set. Why? Because as a student, there’s nothing in it for me. (Walk in.)

A smell, maybe unpleasant to some people, but one which you always like because of an emotional attachment. Me: diesel fumes. BALL TOSS What are we talking about today? I don’t know.. science: gases. English class: writing using your senses. History: New Salem interpreter..the difference: the smell.

The idea…get the kids talking about it, then YOU join in. We usually try to do the opposite.

It uses the natural energy that your kids bring into the classroom. All research says that hands-on, participatory learning is the most effective and long-lasting. Think back to the greatest learning experiences you had in grade school… I’ll bet you were doing.. not just watching and listening. Bottom line: in order to learn, we must be mentally loosened up.. mental calisthenics. Yes, it’s a trick! It’s a smooth transition between the attitudes and behavior of your kids when they enter the classroom and the day’s lesson. Our minister…teen heads down…

I have never taught a class in any subject matter where an opening speech exercise wasn’t appropriate.

More Samples Here: ---Something about you that would surprise most people if they knew it. (Ask someone a lesson they’ve recently taught, then design a question.) ---In what were you not prepared for teaching

One of the best thing about using the opening questions is that it tells you what the class knows so you can build on it. THIS IS NOT THE SAME as asking, “Who knows something about multiplication?” Put the ball in their hands. ---What was the worst mistake you’ve ever made with numbers?

Don’t simply ask “Can somebody tell me something about genetics?” ---What’s the best trait you got from your mother or father?

And by the way, the opening question need not always be tied in to the day’s lesson. You may just want to use it for focus.

Right off the bat, you tell the students that you care about what they have to say.

The second way to use speech as a tool in your teaching box… as a method of instruction and evaluation.

Two most common methods of evaluation: ---Test ---Written report

We are trusting reports less and less. A report or an essay… get it off the Internet. If you’re smart, reword it and put in a few spelling mistakes. A speech…very hard to fake your way through it. REMEMBER: This is not a “read” speech. You find out more about what a student knows..especially if you have them stand for questioning from the class.

Okay… How do you incorporate this into your curriculum? Let me take what may seem like the hardest subject to incorporate speech skills. My student teaching… final week: wandered around the school and observed. Roger McClintock’s math class. Had students put the rules of geometry to poetry, then a group rap. He had a debate over theorems.

Roger said he used it as a teaching tool. “You don’t have to understand it to write it down. When you talk about it, you can’t fake your way through it.”

A yearly miracle in my 8th-grade class. The Persuasive speech, then stand for questioning. I cannot believe what I hear in both the speeches and the questioning. And the kids love it. The single-most requested activity to do again.

In short, nearly everything you test can be displayed through speech. And the beauty of public speaking in class, is that (unlike a paper or a quiz), everyone hears it. One reason some teachers shy away from speaking projects is the time it takes. Remember: speech is a public activity. We all hear. If you write a report on Afghanistan, you see and the teacher sees it. If you speak about Afghanistan, we all learn something.

One of the joys of teaching kids to speak: it has its own built-in incentive. If you fail in math, it’s a private failure.. You, the teacher, perhaps your parents. In speech, your failure or your success is public. I never…never… have to enthuse my students to do well when giving a speech after they’ve given their first one. We want to look good in front of our friends. A test is for the teacher. A written report is for the teacher. A speech is for the class.

An additional benefit: Speaking in class, more than anything else, builds a sense of community… vital for a good learning environment.

But the biggest advantage.. nothing builds a student’s self-confidence more quickly than becoming comfortable in front of a group. Reader’s Digest survey..

Our school..basically a student body who in large part don’t mind getting up and doing things..especially noticeable when a new student transfers in.. not because of our plays or speech contest, but the classroom experience. Much speaking on the Jr. High level.

Stage fright? Not the problem you may think. Stage fright is most acute in adults. Always give them a sample speech first.

How to instruct them. Speak from notes. Don’t read. If you need to, limit the number of note cards.

If you shy away from speaking assignments because you don’t know how to grade them, let me suggest a very simple guideline, whether for 2nd-graders or seniors:

---Does it make one point and make it clearly? ---Does it have a beginning, middle and ending? ---Is it interesting?

Please don’t put on many other qualifications. Let the students find their style. My most valuable teaching lesson. Me: I.C. First speech. Girl from Chicago ahead of me. 30 min. Memorized. “Urban Sprawl” Perfect. He let her have it. Then me…I spoke about showing cattle at the fair. I knew I was dead. Gave the class a pop quiz on the content of our two speeches. They could answer half the questions on hers and every one of mine. He let me find my style. He taught us that good public speaking means being simple and plain.

Look at the speaking styles in the room today.

Bob Slavens

The reason I love teaching speech is because it changes the speaker as well as the audience. Nearly everyone in this room would run out in terror if everyone else were to find out what they’re really like. But the truth: If everyone in this room knew what you were really like, you’d be the best-loved person in the room. Teach your students to open their mouths and allow themselves to be loved.

A final note about so-called slow-learners: Last year: a group of seventh-graders with very high ability and very low performance.. I spent a lot of time thinking about when I was the slow one.

I’ve thought about times when I was out of the loop… not on the same page: ---college Spanish (four years of Latin.. advanced course) ---Began teaching at a college two years ago… grading session.. words I didn’t know…no attempt to fill me in. ---Writers’ Conference in London… dinner at a table with multi-lingual Europeans.. kept switching languages.

What didn’t I have? The LANGUAGE. Your students with poor writing skills often label themselves dumb simply because they don’t have the tool of written language yet.

In most of our classrooms, written communications skills are the necessary key to get in. Unless you can write well and answer written questions and assignments, you are pretty much thought of as one of the dumb ones. Of course we must teach those skills, but we must keep the communications door open through speaking.

Mrs. Smith.. 5th grade.

Last year.. a boy named Sam…took nearly the entire year to convince him that speaking skills and writing were not the same. He’d labeled himself a dummy because of his inability to spell and his handwriting was awful. My biggest joy was seeing Sam realize that he was worth a great deal, even if he couldn’t write well.

One of the best by-products of using speech in all my classes. I end up having classes who aren’t afraid to ask questions.

Questions?

More sample ball toss: Handling Emotions---The most frightened you’ve been lately. Science---An invention you’d like to see. A unit on families: ---The best dish your mother made. Something you got away with that your parents still don’t know about. A moment that really changed your life… a defining moment.

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