Speak Up Early: Why learning public-speaking gives kids an edge

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-holding-black-dynamic-microphone-while-looking-above-236149/

In the fifth grade, I won the class spelling bee, but I didn’t want to represent my grade in the school spelling bee. Why? Because the thought of speaking in front of an audience made me want to hide under the bed. Fast forward to high school, where I slowly and painfully made it through a speech on astrology (we had to choose a topic on the supernatural). Although I always aced the writing assignments, I knew that my speaking skills needed a lot of work. So, it was a surprise when, later in life I ended up becoming a corporate trainer, speaking in front of hundreds of people in a variety of companies.

However, the path wasn’t easy, and looking back, I really wish I’d learned public speaking earlier.

And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve heard many people say the same thing. Public-speaking is one of the most important skills, but many people grow up without much practice. Just like learning a new language is easier when you’re a kid, learning presentation skills early instead of waiting until adulthood can make a huge difference.

Why should kids learn speaking skills?  

1)     Build confidence: Helps you stand up for yourself

2)     Get People to Listen: Explain an idea in a way that grabs people’s attention.  

3)     Win arguments: Create smart and well-crafted explanations for your views.

4)     Build Empathy: Understand what your audience finds interesting so that you can better connect with them.

5)     Be Creative: Come up with new, fun ways to get your point across and engage the audience.

6)     Develop Research Skills: Practice digging into the facts and details of a topic to get your point across.

7)     Connect with People. In the age of technology and social media, it helps you get more comfortable communicating face-to-face.

8)     Future Work: Be prepared for interviews or to sell your ideas if you start your own business.

Sure, more schools are requiring kids to learn how to give presentations earlier, but it’s rare that a kid will want to work on public-speaking skills for fun. I know that I didn’t! I always preferred a good story over a dry textbook.

That’s why I came up with an entertaining story to teach kids the basic principles of being a successful speaker using the 5 P’s of Presentations.

1) Point

2) Prepare

3) Practice

4) Play

5) Present

About Super Speaker – Coming Soon!

Gia Dorsey is an outspoken, funny, and clumsy sixth-grader, otherwise known as Super She, a TV show superhero alias she gave herself to feel more confident – confidence she needs to save kids from bullies, give a speech, and do the scariest thing of all – start middle school.

It’s not me, it’s Super She, Gia thinks to herself after doing outlandish things such as speaking at a school assembly, pulling a prank in History class, and doing an impromptu cheer at a soccer game. After all, she’s willing to do anything to stop perfectly perfect Cora Dressler from stealing her best friend, Lance Garrett.

But Lance thinks that Cora can do no wrong and is even sure she’ll win the Speech Masters Contest. When Gia’s new friend, Annabelle Hale, enters this public-speaking contest, Gia is determined to help her win. She volunteers to coach Annabelle on the 5 P’s of Presentations and also starts a “little rumor” about Cora.

However, when the rumor spreads like wildfire and risks burning her friendships, Gia can’t rely on Super She’s superpowers. Instead, plain old Gia Dorsey must use her own powers.

This story captures middle school angst in a humorous way and shows that a superhero lives inside each person, but can only be discovered if she’s able to overcome fears and be her true self.

Storytelling - overrated or overlooked teaching tool?

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Storytelling has played a key role for humans for thousands of years. It doesn’t take money or resources to tell stories, yet it has helped build connections and relationships throughout history. Storytelling isn’t only a form of timeless entertainment but also an important and effective teaching tool that is often overlooked.

Many textbooks and lessons for children are written in a dry, formulaic manner. Children are curious and eager to learn. Although they are not born to think that school will be boring, the way that concepts and information are presented to them can cause them to lose interest and believe that the entire topic is boring.

Why is storytelling effective?

Stories don’t just engage the mind, but also aim to elicit emotions, and are helpful in teaching lessons.

In the book, How to Tell Stories to Children, authors Joseph Sarosy and Silke Rose West, illustrate why stories should be used as a vital part of teaching.

According to Rose West and Sarosy, one reason is that people are more likely to remember material from a story (2021). “Memory has as much to do with how information is taken in as how it is recalled. Attention plays a key role, telling the brain where and when to lay down tracks for the incoming information. As we all know, however, attention is a limited resource. Storytelling, along with its central characters, emotional gravity, unusual plot developments, and descriptive language, is one of the most powerful tools we have for gaining and retaining attention” (Rose West & Sarosy, 2021, p. 108).

Have you ever read the same line over and over again without paying attention and then not been able to recall what you just read a few minutes later?

We’ll remember information differently based on how we gain that information. The package that is used to deliver that information plays a key part in how much of it the learner engages with and retains.

Information presented in a dull way doesn’t have the same effect as information presented in an interesting way even though it’s the same information. Start with the end result or goal in mind – the student learns the information. Now, work backwards from there. How do I present this topic in a way that causes the audience to listen? Who is my audience? What is their knowledge level? What do they find interesting?

This method may seem time-consuming and it certainly takes more time than just regurgitating facts and statistics from a text book, but put it into the context of your goal. Your goal shouldn’t be to present the information. If that was your only goal, then obviously, reading the facts would be the fastest way to reach the goal.

Keep in mind that the goal is that the child learns the information. In that case, it is more efficient to use a story or an anecdote to present the information in an interesting way, because the extra time it takes upfront to come up with a creative package for the information will help shorten the time it takes for the learning to occur.

Fiction vs. Nonfiction  

“We did not choose books solely for their instructional value. I would even say we chose them mainly on the basis of the enthusiasm they were likely to arouse in the children – as opposed to in us, or in the school-district officials,” wrote Céline Alvarez, a bestselling researching and educator, in her book The Natural Laws of Children: Why Children Thrive When We Understand How Their Brains Are Wired (Alvarez, 2019, p. 186). She observed that the children were much more engaged when they were interested in the story.

Common Core standards required students to have nonfiction be a certain percentage of their reading instead of primarily reading fiction. Natalie Wexler, education journalist, points out in The Knowledge Gap that the argument in favor of this change toward nonfiction was that students would gain useful knowledge versus reading fiction, which didn’t teach anything. However, a challenge they ran into was that. without having relevant knowledge, the students struggled to examine or even understand the nonfiction texts. They were better able to understand fiction since it was based on familiar human behavior (Wexler, 2019).

Certainly, there are merits to reading fiction and nonfiction. Why not have both in the same text? An entertaining story that elicits enthusiasm and has educational value.

Using storytelling to teach public-speaking

I wrote Super Speaker because I wished that I had been exposed to public-speaking at a younger age, because developing my presentation skills helped me gain confidence and become a better communicator in many different arenas of life.

Sure, I could’ve just written my framework for effective public speaking – the  5 P’s of Presentations and the descriptions - and have been done with it. It would’ve taken me much less time and effort and it would take the reader much less time and effort as well. But there wouldn’t be any emotions involved. That method wouldn’t have portrayed public-speaking as interesting and would’ve been less likely to engage the reader at their level. The book’s main characters are sixth-graders starting middle school and going through changes that are relevant to the audience.

Instead of having the kids listen to an adult lecturing them about why they better learn public-speaking, they are treated to a story that elicits emotions and hopefully makes them want to continue reading. As they learn the steps, they are also exposed to the importance of public-speaking, but not as a skill that they’ll use someday somehow as an adult. Instead, they can see how they could use it in their current world along with practical steps that they can use.

Learning should be fun

Yes, seriously! By making learning interesting, the student is much more likely to engage with the content.

How do you make learning fun?

1. Stop taking yourself so seriously and don’t be afraid to try something new with the content. Take risks to determine what works.

2. Tell stories that tie into the lesson.

3. Make the lesson visually engaging.

4. Connect two seemingly disconnected ideas.

5. Draw ideas from engaging entertainment. Understand the entertainment that the age group consumes and tie that knowledge into your teaching.

Education + Design + Storytelling = Engaged Learner

Image by saralcassidy from Pixabay