At present, he has about 10 minutes of homework each night - with his home-reader and his homework sheets. I personally think that's enough, to reinforce what he is doing at school.
The competition is for the entire K-6 primary school, and I thought it was a bit much to send the SAME note home for Kindergarten to year 6. Surely the expectations are {should} be different? No doubt they are, but LegoBoys teacher has said that it does get more formal if they get further through the competition.
To para-phrase the note home in dot point:
- Deliver a speech as part of the Talkingn and Listening program in English.
- Stages for each class, and then the scohol.
- Top 2 students will reprent the school at the Zone competition (they do Zone for sport, and now for academic activities?)
- At regional level they have 5 minutes preparation time for a 1 minute speech.
- Kindergarten speeches should go from 1-2 minutes.
- Children can select own topics. No props. They can use a microphone.
- Do not introduce selves or thank the audience.
- Will be judged on:
- Creativity/originality
- Choice of topic
- Sustained audience engagement (humour, audience response)
- Presentation
- Creativity/originality of introduction and conclusion
- Well prepared, known by heart or palm cards {THEY CAN'T READ THAT MUCH YET!!!!!!!!!}.
- Clear, expressive voices, audible, pausing and eye contact should be used.
- Stand steady.
- Speech should be interesting and entertaining.
- Parents should listen to their children to provide feedback.
That is scary. I fear for the same note to come home to me........
ReplyDeletewoah... that seems a bit much. The kids in my girl's class struggle enough with finding something to say at show and tell after "This is my x".... surely they can't mean the little kids too?
ReplyDeleteMy daughter could talk about herself for 2hours! It is interesting to her! The audience would certainly be humoured...but i think that is at her not with her! And refers to herself in the 3rd person ALL the time!
ReplyDeleteI think she will blitz the field!!! :)
LOL
Gees, 4 year olds doing a formal presentation...will make my life as an upper primary teacher easier if they start that young!!! :)
On the whole, I think this is a GREAT idea! I got really excited reading about it. And as a junior primary teacher who's 6-7 year olds do powerpoint presentations to their class, I can see how I could make this program work for the younger kids. The trick is setting them up to be successful in it, and that the whole school be supportive about it (ie. no one is laughed down).
ReplyDeletePaul and I just had a big chat about this, and we both thought it was a great idea. We both HATE public speaking and shake in our boots at the thought. We think that a program that starts from a young age can really help kids to grown into confident public speakers.
I can really imagine something like this working for our niece, who's 4. She's a fantastic talker. She goes to the doctors and tells the doctor all about her ails, instead of mum telling him. She calls up kindy to tell them that she's sick today. She's just got the gift of the gab.
One question - Are all kids expected to have a go, or just those who want to? I think perhaps voluntary would be better? As a teacher I would encourage all kids to have a go in the safety of our classroom, but if they don't want to take if further they don't have to.
Like I said, though, it needs to be carefully set up so that it is very supportive. You don't want kids to find it so traumatic that they never want to speak in public again!
Let me know how it goes.
Kylie - thanks for your primary school expertise!!! It's expected that all children participate. Firstly in their classroom, and then "escalating" to a great audience should they progress.
ReplyDeleteHe loves "news" at school, and like you, had public speaking. So I've feared that it's MY fear I'm projecting onto HIM about the enormity of this speech, because to me it's huge! To him, maybe not.
We have two weeks to prepare!!
And at the same time, I don't want to do his 'work' for him.
So we're going to work on it over the next couple of days (we have 2 weeks). Today we chose a subject "My favourite holidays".
Tomorrow we might pick two or three of his favourite 'holidays'.
Then I'll get him to elaborate a few main points for each holiday.
A few cue cards.
Then he can decide what he's going to say.
But yes, definitely expecting all of this for kinders and the whole primary school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Katy, how'd the speech go? Has it happened yet?
ReplyDelete