9 fun activities for public speaking class

Public speaking classes are so much more fun when everyone is involved in special activities! Try some of these ideas to warm up your next class:

1. impromptu speech. Give students various topics to discuss without any preparation. Topics should be relatively easy at first, like “What is your favorite movie and why?” or “If you could only eat one food for a month, what would it be?”
2. Lost game on a deserted island. Introduce the scenario: After a shipwreck, the entire class has been stranded on a deserted island. Each person can bring one object to the island. Ask each student to describe what object it would be and why. (You can extend this into a team building activity by breaking up into teams and having each team figure out how to creatively combine their elements to increase survivability.)
3. tongue twister contest Have two people come up at the same time and take turns repeating a tongue twister. “unique to New York” “Red leather, yellow leather.” Faster and faster. When someone is wrong, they sit down and a challenger appears. Someone can keep score with the class list.
4. 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 must 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 someone else. You could even make it a competition.
5. dramatic reading. You, of course, could choose an intriguing passage, or you could do something like have them read the definitions aloud, just to make it silly by being dramatic.
6. transitions exercise. Distribute 3 sheets of paper to each of the students and write some categories on the board. (Places, People around the school, Food, TV Shows). Have each student 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 goes up to the front of the room in turns and takes a piece of paper and starts talking about whatever is on that piece of paper. Then after a bit of time, she picks 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, the transitions could be phrases like: Now that I’ve told you about the health benefits of apples, let me talk about the health benefits of living in New York City. NY. Finally, let me tell you how New York came to be called the Big Apple.
7. On the other hand. Ask 2 students to come closer. Ask one student to speak “for” an issue and then the other person to speak “against” the same issue.
8. Story of a word. Line up 7-10 students in front (actually, it’s better if they stand in a circle) and ask them to tell an unrehearsed, unrehearsed story, one word at a time, going to the beginning until the story reaches a certain point. spot. 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 that would come next would be “day”, but it certainly could be something else.)
9. 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 in your class rise!