Seems like I spend half my time in the classroom keeping the noise level down, and the rest of the time getting someone besides the regulars to speak up. This post is about the talking part of student presentations, and helping kids to develop an actual public speaking voice. I discovered last week, by accident, just how much my students have to learn about talking in front of people. I had them make science slide shows about global warming. The technology part came out good enough, no prizes for originality, though some were done fairly well. But the talking part….Oh boy! That part was rough. It’s probably been many a year since show and tell happened for them. I see now that what’s needed is an older kid version of the get-up-and-say-something drill.

For all the web-bound discussions about 21st century skills, about writing for a global audience and developing virtual voices, I can’t remember reading much about teaching kids to actually talk in front of an audience. Most of my students turned around with their backs to the class to look at their slides, and mumbled at the screen. Even the attention sponges and clowns - they shriveled. A few brave hearts courageously stood their ground and tried to say something off the cuff. But it was clearly a “thing” we need to work on.

When I taught the lower grades we had show and tell. A discussion with my daughter turned up a surprisingly easy, fun, and useful activity for older students. She told me about something her sixth-grade teacher did, which I’ve now started doing, too. I asked the kids to each write a common noun on one index card. Then I took the front page of the newspaper, and wrote down most of the nouns I found on it, one to a card. To play the game, we draw a student’s name, and a card, at random. The student stands in front of the group and talks extemporaneously for one minute about the chosen word. I told them it was like a freewrite, only out loud. Even though they’re still shy about it, they like doing it. A few at a time, it’s a great thing to do at the beginning or end of a class period with a few moments to spare.

I feel kind of bad that it took me almost the whole year to come up with this idea. I think I’ve focused on writing and reading a little too much. I forgot about presenting. Even though it isn’t tested, we’re going to work on it.