The Greater Princeton branch of AYLUS (GPA) has been working with middle school students on important public speaking skills. We designed the class for beginners with the desire to improve their speaking skills.
GPA member Alissa Wu teaches these classes and creates a schedule based on past roles and student preferences, updates her class spreadsheet, designs slideshows and activities, finds informational videos, and sends students speech feedback. Her class has 10 students, who spend most of the time doing speeches, but they also watch informational videos and do other class activities. She facilitates classes and guides each student as they gain experience within each of the meeting roles.
On July 23rd (2 hrs), the class theme was “Ice Cream.” The class continued doing Project 6 Speeches; the aim is to improve message delivery by varying volume, pace, pitch, and overall by using vocal techniques. They then continued practicing impromptu speeches with questions centered on the theme, such as “What is your favorite ice cream flavor and why?” Students would take a few seconds to think about the question, then give a 1-2 minute speech. After they finished, the teacher gave them feedback did, and pointers on what to improve. They later went over some tips for Table Topics speeches, such as structuring by reason and restating the answer at the end to increase time.
