Public Speaking and Persuasive Speeches

My freshmen have been working hard this past week! Since they have developed a new found love for arguing (about everything, with everyone...SAVE ME), I decided that it was time to teach them about the power of words.  :)  

We took notes about persuasive techniques and I taught them how speakers try to T.R.A.P their listeners.  We even made a cute foldable to explain the process! It looked something like this - 

I told them to always analyze

T - Technique

R - Result

A - Audience

P - Purpose

Next, I chose several different famous persuasive speeches, along with a few from movies that I knew they would be familiar with: Rocky speeches, Friday Night Lights speeches, etc. We color coded speeches and looked for particular devices/techniques used by the speaker. 

We went over this process several times, then I told them it was their turn to create their very own persuasive speech.  Some of them were THRILLED and others were slightly less than thrilled (there might have even been a few tears shed). 

I gave them a specific speech planning sheet that walked them through each step:

 The good news is that they ALL worked hard and completed this assignment.  To make it even more challenging, I told them they had a 2 minute time limit.  They had to introduce a claim, present a counterclaim, convince me to be on their side, and wrap everything up in less than 120 seconds.  

We spent the majority of the week practicing.  I let them practice in small groups first - to get rid of some of the stage fright.  On Friday, I had all 35 of my students present quick, two minute persuasive speeches.  After every speech, I went around the room and the students had to tell me which techniques the speaker used and what they did well.  

I WAS THRILLED WITH THE RESULT! All of my students were engaged with the lesson, and one student even talked me into letting the students use their cell phones for a project!  They really had to work hard to combine all of the elements, AND complete a daunting task: public speaking!  

At the end of the class period, several of my students even asked if we could do this type of project again.  I'm just hoping that they'll learn that words hold far greater power than they ever thought possible!  

I've added my persuasive speech unit to my TPT store!  You can check it out here: Click for Unit!