Speaking in Class

Day 25 of the 31 for 21 Challenge

Does the thought of public speaking make you light-headed?

It does to me. I don’t know if I hold my breath when I’m  speaking in front of a crowd or what - as soon as I’m facing a group of people, all waiting expectantly with their eyes on me, my surroundings start to get dim and blurry, and my head feels like it’s floating away from my neck. My husband has watched this happen on more than one occasion and told me that he can no longer see me inhale and exhale, so he thinks I’m forgetting to breathe. It’s disconcerting to say the least, so I avoid public speaking at all costs.

My apologies to Mrs. Kolkman, but when I first heard that public speaking was a unit in her Personal Development 1 class, I felt kind of bad – um, no, that’s a huge understatement – I felt really horrible for the poor students in her class. 

I can say with all honesty that I have no memory of my Speech class in school once I heard the teacher say that we would be required to give one speech every week for the entire semester. No memory at all. I know now that I spent that entire semester in an oxygen-deprived, alternate state of consciousness. So, I wondered, how can Shepherds College put our students through that??

I stopped feeling so sorry for the students yesterday when Mrs. Kolkman wrote and told me about the awesome experience they had this week!

“One of the goals in Personal Development 1 is to learn how to successfully speak in front of an audience. Students spend a good five weeks on the Speeches unit. From mapping out hand gestures to giving each other appropriate feedback, students were able to successfully present in front of their peers and at a Chapel service for the residents of Shepherds Ministries.

An aspect of public speaking that students really work on is using an “expressive voice.” To enhance this skill, students were told to pick a story book from the library when they visit during their Study Skills class. The requirements were that the book had to have pictures and it had to have words.

Students came back with a colorful variety of books! We had ‘One Fish, Two Fish’ by Dr. Seuss, ‘Are You My Mother?’ by P.D. Eastman, ‘A Bad Case of Stripes’ by David Shannon, and much, much more!

Students had fun practicing changing their voice to emulate different characters. We practiced characters such as Darth Vader, Steve Urkle, and even Barbie! Students also were assigned a different Disney character and had to do their best to imitate them.

All this said, students worked on reading a story aloud to their peers using expression and changing their voices to become different characters. This skill is also applied to continuing Speeches where they will be assessed on their use of expression to make their presentation more exciting and captivating for their audience.

Once students had mastered reading their books to each other, we loaded up a van and drove to Union Grove Elementary School where teachers had opened up their classrooms to our students.

The field trip was to allow our students R.E.A.L. experience and application for their speeches. Students had to apply everything they learned for a presentation in order to demonstrate it to the community.

Our students were able to introduce themselves and read their books out loud to the classroom students. It was a fun and memorable experience!

The children at Union Grove Elementary School were a great audience – laughing at the stories and asking questions about our students and Shepherds College.”

After the college students read to the school kids, I heard from one of the third grade teachers, “Last week I told the students that Wade would be visiting our classroom. We discussed what a disability is and the different disabilities someone might have. We also talked about how we could encourage him since he might be nervous.

Wade read the book ‘Up’ by Dr. Seuss. He had a strong voice and read very fluently. It only took him about five minutes to read the book and we had fifteen minutes, so we started asking him questions. So many students wanted to ask questions that we ran out of time. At the end, Wade said to the students, ‘I hope I can come back to THIS class again because you are very nice and ask lots of questions.’”

Mrs. Kolkman also heard from some of the teachers, as well as her students, about this experience:

“They laughed and I was encouraged by the children. They made me feel that I can do this thing, that I can accomplish anything.” Philip

“I was sitting in a chair. It made me feel like a teacher when the kids listened to me.” Maika

“It was fun and amazing because it was great being around people you don’t know.” Nikki

“The one thing I really enjoyed was making the kids laugh and make them like me, and they said I was very funny for them to make them laugh.” David

“I loved it and I had a wonderful time and I would like to do it again sometime.” Kathryn

“It was AWESOME!! Let’s do it again!” Alex

“It was a wonderful dream come true. It was also a wonderful experience to read to little children because I’ve never done this before.” Charles

“This was a great community activity! The readers in my room did a fantastic job! The students enjoyed the stories. Thanks for coming!” Mrs. Callewaert (2^nd grade)

“We’d love to do it again any time!” Mrs. Swantz (3^rd grade)

“I hope you will do this again next year! It was a great experience for us too!” Mrs. Zarletti-Passe (Kindergarten)

Thank you to Union Grove Elementary School for welcoming the students from Shepherds College into your classrooms!

Congratulations to all the Personal Development 1 students for the incredible job they did reading to the children.

And congratulations to Mrs. Kolkman for having made public speaking - a Top Ten fear outranked in polls only by the fear of snakes and being buried alive – a task that was fun for everyone!

 

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.