Best manners

Step 1: When it’s your turn, collect a card with a fictional person and public speaking scenario on it.

Some example characters and scenarios:

1. • news reporter – reporting on the birth of new animals at the local zoo

   • teacher – teaching shapes to Kindergarten students

   • a new and fairly unknown actor – winning an Academy Award

   • a Prime Minister – giving a press conference about the upcoming election

   • CEO or businessperson – presenting an exciting new product to their stakeholders or business team

   • spruiker at a fair – encouraging people to come and try the food at their stall

   • a used items salesperson – trying to sell an item that doesn’t work anymore to someone over the phone

   • Olympic medallist – giving a press interview right after winning their medal

   • a famous YouTuber – reviewing a new product

   • Australian of the Year – acceptance speech at the awards ceremony.

Step 2: You have 30 seconds of thinking time to mentally prepare for your performance.

Step 3: Stand in front of the group and speak as if you are the fictional character in that scenario. Note: you can’t give it away too easily! For example, you couldn’t say “That’s why I, as a famous actor, am so excited to receive this Academy Award today!” However, you could say “I am just so surprised that I’ve won this prestigious award today for my work in High School Musical 7. What an honour!”.

Step 4: Students have one turn each at guessing your character and the scenario. Reveal the correct answer.

Step 5: Repeat the game until all players have had a turn at performing.

The aim of the game is to be the person speaking when the buzzer goes off (as a group, choose your time goal – it could be 3 minutes, 5 minutes or 10 minutes).

Step 1: The teacher or the group selects a topic. For a more challenging game, instead of picking an open-ended topic such as ‘sport’, use a debating topic such as ‘Schools should/should not have daily sport lessons’.

Step 2: The first student stands in front of the group and begins to speak about the topic.

Step 3: If the speaker repeats themselves or talks about something not related to the topic they can be ‘challenged’ by another student. To challenge, the student should raise their hand and the stopwatch stops momentarily.

Step 4: The challenger must explain their objection in a factual, respectful manner. If the teacher agrees the challenge is correct, that student takes over as speaker and the stopwatch restarts. This continues until the buzzer or timer goes off.

Step 5: Repeat the game with a different topic and a different starting speaker until everyone has had a turn at speaking.

Occasionally, a distraction will occur when you are speaking in a debate. The bell might ring, the other team might be whispering loudly or someone in the audience makes a comment. It is important to be able to stay focused.

Practise ignoring distractions by playing this game.

Step 1: Pick a text to be read aloud (a chapter book for example).

Step 2: One student starts off, reading from the book.

Step 3: One by one, the other students get a 5-second window to distract the speaker as they remain seated.

They can do this by whispering, making a funny face or tapping their foot. They cannot get up, move around, yell or do anything too ridiculous. Think about distractions that might occur in a debate and stick to these sorts of things.

Step 4: The speaker stops when the other students have all had a turn at attempting to distract them. If you ‘break’ (for example, you break into laughter or forget what you were saying), just take a breath, focus and try to resume talking as best you can until the end of your turn.

Step 5: Repeat the game until all students have had a turn at speaking.

Step 1: In a team of 4, allocate one job to each person:

• speaker

• timer

• recorder

• reporter.

Step 2: The teacher will give you an open-ended topic such as ‘school’, ‘happiness’, ‘family’ or ‘being healthy’.

Step 3: The speaker has 30 seconds to quickly jot down some ideas (dot points) about what they could talk about. For example, “Health = education. Need to educate about food, physical activity and mental wellbeing.”

Challenge: if you want to make it harder, try using simple debating topics instead of open-ended topics. For example: ‘School days should be shorter’ or ‘All schools should teach gardening and cooking skills’.

Step 4: The speaker gets up and presents their impromptu speech in front of the group, using only their dot-point palm card. The aim is to speak for at least 1 minute (no more than 2 minutes – you do not want to ramble on).

Step 5: The timer is responsible for timing. They should raise their hand briefly or ring a bell when the speaker reaches 1 minute. They should hold their hand in the air or ring the bell twice if the speaker reaches 2 minutes to indicate that time is up.

Step 6: The timer, recorder and reporter have 45 seconds to discuss what the speaker spoke about, to show they were listening. The recorder quickly writes down some dot points for the reporter about what was said in the speech.

Step 7: The reporter stands up and provides a clear, simple summary of what the speech was about.

Step 8: Rotate roles and repeat the activity until everyone has had a turn at being the speaker.

Challenge: When you become competent at this activity, remove step 3 (the 30 seconds preparation time). Instead, the speaker will have to immediately stand up and begin speaking with no palm cards to refer to!

Step 1: Together, create a list of some well-known celebrities (enough for each person playing). These should be diverse. For example, there should be people of different ages, genders and occupations included in the list.

Step 2: Each student is randomly allocated a celebrity character (you do not get to pick!)

Step 3: In this game, we imagine that all the characters are on board an aircraft. The aircraft is about to crash but there is only one parachute – therefore only one person gets to theoretically survive! Each student gets 1-2 minutes to explain why they should be the person to get the parachute.

Each student, speaking in character, gets a turn at presenting their case. You must first begin by explaining why the person before you does not deserve the parachute more than you.

Step 4: You then explain why you are the most valuable and deserving person on board and why you should get the parachute. A timer should use a bell or buzzer to let you know when your time is up.

Note: If you were the first speaker, you can’t ‘rebut’ the person before you as no one went before you! Instead, you wait until the end and rebut the final speaker, explaining why they do not deserve the parachute more than you.

Step 5: Continue until everyone has had a turn to speak. If you want an extra challenge, try not to repeat the same reason that someone else has already given!

Step 1: Students create 2 concentric circles. The inner circle is the negative team, the outer circle is the affirmative team. Each student should have a partner they are facing from the other circle.

Step 2: The teacher gives the students a debating topic. For example, the topic could be ‘That schools should ban plastic’ or ‘That school days should be shorter’. All students have 5 minutes to write down 3 arguments for their case.

Remember, the negative team disagrees with the topic and the affirmative team agrees with the topic.

Step 3: The affirmative team goes first. Each affirmative team speaker explains their first argument to their partner (all affirmative team members speak at the same time to their partners). They have 1 minute. The buzzer or bell goes when time is up.

Step 4: The negative team can choose to either rebut what the affirmative team member has said or they can say their own argument (they also get 1 minute).

Step 5: The affirmative team then rebuts or gives another argument (1 minute time limit).

Step 6: Students on the outer circle all rotate, moving one spot to their right so they are in front of a new partner.

Step 7: This time, the negative team begins. They have 1 minute to explain an argument that supports their case.

Step 8: The affirmative team rebuts or gives their own argument. Return to the negative speaker for their next argument or rebuttal.

Step 9: The affirmative team rotates again, taking one more step to the right. Start from Step 3 again.

Step 10: Continue until you are back to the partner you started with.

Note: It is okay to repeat arguments or rebuttals throughout the game. It is good if this happens as it will give you more confidence when you get to explain your argument or rebuttal for the second time.

Step 1: Students are given a topic (for example ‘That swimming lessons should be compulsory for all students’). Each student decides whether they agree or disagree.

Step 2: If they agree, they sit on one side of the room. If they disagree, they sit on the other. The teacher stands in the middle, halfway between both teams.

Step 3: Students volunteer by raising their hands and giving an argument for why they are correct. If the teacher believes it is a strong argument for their case, they will take one step towards that team. They can take a big step or regular step depending on the level of persuasiveness. Hint: try to give examples to add emphasis to your argument.

Step 4: A student from the other team then gets a turn. They can choose to either rebut (say why a previous argument was incorrect, irrelevant or inaccurate) or state their own argument. Again, if the teacher believes it is persuasive, they take a step back towards that team.

Step 5: The game ends when each speaker has had a turn at speaking. See which team the teacher has ended up closer to! Often, the teacher will be somewhere near the middle if both teams have been very persuasive.

If the teams are different sizes (for example 4 students on one team and 2 on another), each team gets an equal amount of turns (in that example it would be 4 turns per team). Therefore, if you are on the smaller team, you might have to speak more than once!

Tricky challenge: The teacher, at any time, may choose to reverse your decision. For example, the teacher might decide that all the students who sat on the ‘agree’ side have to instead disagree with the topic and vice versa. This is good practice as you don’t get to choose which side you are on in a debate!