Suggested Activities for Chapter 8
- Call students up for impromptu speeches. Give them topics and have each student deliver a two-minute speech that includes two pieces of support. After listening to a few speeches, ask students to reflect on the kinds of support that speakers chose.
- Show a video clip of a speech (by a student, a politician, or an actor). Have students write down the kinds of supporting materials used. After comparing notes, have the class decide on the best and worst supporting materials.
- Find a few etymological definitions (from the Oxford English Dictionary or another source) for topics that interest you. Give the definitions to groups of students and then have them create a speech topic, purpose, thesis, and outline for which they would use that piece of support.
- Have a few students give one-minute presentations on their favorite stories from childhood. (You may want to pick different students if you also required part of the class to speak for activity 1 above, and use the day as a way to get everyone up in front of the class.) As a group, reflect on what makes a good story.
- Give students a dense statistical section from an article in a periodical. Have individual students select a part of the section and present it to the class as they would for a speech (see parenthetical in activity 4). As a class, discuss how students, as speakers, process numbers and how they think their audience processes them.