Practicing Public Speaking

On Saturday, November 5th, the fourth graders and their big sisters practiced public speaking through fun activities. We began by going over the principles of public speaking: standing tall and confident, staying still, eye contact, and projecting your voice. For the first activity, each fourth grader picked a random object from a bag and was asked to go to the front of the room and speak about the object for 45 seconds. While they were speaking, they were recorded. After each girl spoke for the first time, they each watched the recording of themselves, and had to say one thing they did well and one thing they wanted to improve on. For the second round, we had the girls pick a random question and answer the question for 45 seconds. We emphasized that they try their hardest to work on whatever they thought they needed to after watching their recording. Afterwards, we had the audience comment on things each girl did well. We noticed significant improvement from each girl, and their confidence levels seemed much higher the second time through.