☰ Form of the Week- Form 5: Persuasive Speeches

Form of the Week- Form 5: Persuasive Speeches

Posted on: November 30th 2012

For the last few weeks, Form 5 have been looking at both persuasive speech and writing in their English lessons.

At the start of the topic, they watched a range of video clips depicting speeches by some of the most famous public speakers in history. These included Martin Luther King Jnr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and recent speeches delivered by the newly re-elected President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The children discussed the speakers’ body language and use of gestures and eye contact to help them formulate a checklist of non-verbal techniques to use when presenting their own persuasive speeches.

They then started to think about how those famous speeches had been structured and the children identified the main points that were being conveyed.

Next, they tried to pinpoint any other verbal techniques that had been used to make the speech more convincing, such as repetition of key ideas, short and powerful statements and the use of rhetorical questions.

Now that the children were armed with their second checklist of how to actually formulate an effective and emotive speech they were ready to try and write one of their own.

The children’s chosen topics were extremely varied, ranging from world hunger, racism in football and adopting rescue dogs to arguments about why they should be allowed to have a pet.

They independently planned their speeches, making sure they had:

The children then set about writing their speeches in full. It was so impressive to see how the children had assimilated what they had learned during the unit and many of them demonstrated their understanding of the techniques we had studied by applying them successfully in their own speeches.

After some crucial practice time, Form 5 were ready to deliver their speeches to the rest of the class.  The speeches were filmed using the Flipcams so that they could evaluate them afterwards.

Overall, the children did very well, speaking clearly and confidently, convincing their audience of their point of view with well-constructed and emotive speeches. Who knows, we may have witnessed the first steps into the world of public speaking of the next Prime Minister or Nobel Peace Prize winner!

Form 5 worked extremely hard and performed brilliantly and they should be congratulated on their efforts!

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