Speech classes are so much more fun when everyone participates in special activities! Try some of these ideas to warm up your next class:
- Impromptu speech. Give students various topics to talk about without any preparation. Topics should be relatively easy at first, like “What’s your favorite movie and why?” or “If you could only eat one food for a month, what would it be?”
- Game lost on a desert island. Present the scenario: After a shipwreck, the entire class is stranded on a desert island. Each person can bring an item to the island. Ask each student to describe what the object would be and why. (You can extend this to a team building activity by breaking up into teams and having each team figure out how to creatively combine their items to increase survivability.)
- Tongue twister contest. Have two people come up at a time and take turns repeating a tongue twister. “New York unique” “Red leather, yellow leather.” More and faster. When someone messes up, they sit down and a challenger appears. Someone can keep score with the class list.
- Dramatic golden alphabet numbers. Students can “lecture” the class by reciting the alphabet or counting to 30, but with gestures, drama, and eye contact. ABCD! EFGH? I, JKL-M… , etc. You could emphasize eye contact by adding this activity: The speaker should make and hold eye contact for at least 3 seconds per person. All students raise their hands. When the speaker initiates eye contact with someone, that person mentally counts to 3 and then lowers their hand, letting the speaker know that the 3 seconds are up. The speaker can then move on to another person. You could even turn it into a competition.
- dramatic reading. You, of course, could choose an intriguing passage, or you could do something like have them read the definitions out loud, just to make you goofy by being dramatic.
- transitions exercise. Distribute 3 sheets of paper to each of the students and write some categories on the board. (Places, People around the school, Foods, TV Shows). Ask each student to choose 3 of the categories and write a word that corresponds to that category. Then collect the pieces of paper in a container. Each student comes up to the front of the room in turn and takes a piece of paper and starts talking about whatever is on that piece of paper. Then, after a little while, he picks up another sheet for the student and says, “Okay, Amanda, your next topic is…” and then the student’s job is to transition from one topic to the next. It’s okay for the audience to help. It’s okay to offer another topic if the student is stuck. Using “apples” and “New York City” as examples, transitions can be phrases like: Now that I’ve told you about the health benefits of apples, let me tell you about the health benefits of living in New York City. New York. Finally, let me tell you how New York came to be called the Big Apple.
- On the other hand. Ask 2 students to come closer. Ask one student to speak “for” a topic and then ask the other person to speak “against” the same topic.
- Story of a word. Line 7-10 students up front (it’s actually best if they stand in a circle) and ask them to tell an unrehearsed, unthought-out story, one word at a time, going from the beginning until the story reaches a certain point. point. logical conclusion. The key is that each person can only say one word at a time, and this includes boring words like “and” and “the.” You could start the story by saying something like “One.” (The logical thing to come next would be “day”, but it certainly could be something else.)
- Sell a product. Have strange objects for students to “sell” to their classmates. You can present the FAB format and ask them to use it. F=Features, A=Advantages, B=Benefits. The focus should be on the benefits. Toilet paper, anyone?
Add some fun activities and watch the interest level rise in your class!
