@The Arts Unit Creative Classes
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Captivate your audience with impressive impromptu speeches
Captivate your audience with impressive impromptu speeches
Student public speaking resource developed by The Arts Unit
Years 3 to 6 public speaking
What will I learn?
What will I learn?
You will:
identify and reflect on the elements of an impromptu speech
respond quickly to a stimulus
organise your ideas
practise your own impromptu speeches.
Welcome to the class
Duration: 00:30Before you begin
Before you begin
You will need:
an ideas notebook and a pen
palm cards or pieces of paper
a hat or box or small container to put topics in
stopwatch or phone timer.
- Identify
In public speaking competitions, there are certain things you should be aware of before you attempt the impromptu section.
Watch the clip, ‘Hints and guidelines for public speaking competitions – Impromptu speeches', and complete the activities.
In a competition, how much of the final result is determined by the impromptu speech?
Make a list of the things that should NOT be included in an impromptu speech.
Make a list of the suggested topics that were mentioned.
Write down anything else you learned from this video.
Hints and guidelines for public speaking competitions – Impromptu speeches
Duration: 01:42
Harriet Coates
2019 State Champion – Multicultural Perspective Public Speaking for Years 3 & 4
In competitions such as the Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition, speakers in Years 3 and 4 are given 5 minutes of preparation time for a one-minute impromptu speech, while speakers in Years 5 and 6 are given 5 minutes for a two-minute impromptu speech.
Five minutes seems like a long time, so let’s have a go.
Reflect on the elements of an impromptu speech.
Using your palm cards or a piece of paper, give yourself 5 minutes to write down some ideas in response to each topic below.
Topic 1
Changes
Topic 2
The next step
Topic 3
Good news
Record yourself (or ask someone to record you) speaking on this topic for 1 minute.
Watch the recording back and write some observations in your notebook about what you were doing.
You might write down things such as:
How long you spoke for before running out of things to say.
Were you listing things to do with the topic?
How many times did you say 'um', 'ah' or 'like'?
Did you repeat yourself?
Did you leave long pauses?
Anything else you observed.
Keep these notes to refer to later.
2. Respond
2. Respond
Respond quickly to stimulus
The best way to prepare for impromptu speaking is through practice! And the good news is that there are lots of fun ways to practise impromptu speaking that take it from being a difficult task to something that you feel comfortable doing.
Play these games with a partner to build up your impromptu muscles! You can play them in person or in an online forum like messenger chat or even just over the phone!
Word associations
This game teaches you to think quickly and respond to the meanings of words.
Work with a partner.
One person says a simple word, such as ‘elephant’.
The other person replies with the first word that comes into their head, such as ‘big’, ‘trunk’ or ‘remember’.
Focus on saying the response word as quickly as you can and not repeating words that have already been said.
The first person responds with the first word that comes into their head and so on.
After a few rounds, your partner should respond with a whole sentence.
Be tricky and try some more challenging words!
For example:
River – My uncle likes to go fishing in the river.
Hope – I’ve always been taught that when I feel sad I should try to look for hope.
Advantage – The referee blew his whistle for a penalty and gave the other team an advantage.
If you are stuck for words, there are some in the drop-down boxes below. You could cut them up or write some words of your own, place them in a hat and take turns at coming up with whole sentences that are prompted by one word.
Simple
add
bark
car
drum
end
fun
gift
harm
if
just
keep
land
Common
afraid
birthday
choose
debate
educate
family
garden
happiness
islands
joke
knee
lesson
Difficult
awareness
bargain
celebration
disappear
evidence
favourite
generation
honest
illegal
journey
knowledge
language
Challenging
adolescent
brilliance
consequence
discipline
environment
fascinating
guarantee
humanitarian
irresponsible
justice
kayak
leisure
Group story-telling. This game helps you to structure your response by using a beginning, a middle and an end.
It also reminds you to lead to a point in your story.
Before playing this game, review the elements of a narrative text.
Narrative elements
Orientation – The beginning of the story. Tells the audience who is involved and where the characters are.
Complication – Something disturbs the normal routine for our character.
Events/consequences – The things that happen to the character as a direct result of the complication.
Resolution – The ending. Things may go back to normal for the character but with some important changes.
Coda – The moral of the story.
Now that you have reviewed the elements of narrative, with a partner or in a small group, tell a story together.
Each person takes responsibility for a part of the story and will speak for 30 seconds before the next person continues the story and extends it for another 30 seconds.
Continue until the story is complete with a moral or coda.
An impromptu speech should also be structured with a beginning, a middle and an end. One way to approach your impromptu speech is to use this narrative structure:
Think about the complication in a story as the issue that you think is disturbing the natural order of the community you want to talk about.
The events in the story are the ongoing problems that occur as a direct result of that issue.
And the conclusion of your story is the solution that you think will fix the issue.
Finally, the moral of your story is the point you are trying to make in your speech so that your audience will think about what you have said.
Listen to this impromptu speech.
Identify how the speaker has used a narrative structure in order to make a point about the topic, 'rewards'.
Eden Wong – Rewards
2019 Years 3 & 4 Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking FinalistDuration: 01:173. Organise
3. Organise
You can get ready for an impromptu speech in the same way as you would for a prepared speech.
Don’t try to learn a speech off by heart and ignore the topic but do:
pay attention to what is going on around you
think about the lessons that can be learned from everyday events
structure your ideas using dot points in your notebook
learn the meanings of new words and phrases so that you can interpret any topic and use it to say something important to your audience.
Watch how Micaela explains how she prepares for impromptu speaking by staying aware of the issues in the society she is living in.
Preparing for an impromptu speech
Duration: 00:52Using your ideas notebook, write down something that you have learned recently.
This lesson may have been found in:
a book that you read
a film that you watched
a news story you saw on TV
a discussion with friends or family
something you saw on the internet
a game that you have played
something your teacher talked about in class.
For example: you may have read a book where you felt you could relate to the main character in some way. Because of this, you may have learned a valuable lesson about yourself as an individual and also about the way society views people who are considered to be ‘different’.
In your ideas notebook, you could write down:
the name of the book
the name of the character you could relate to and why
some dot points about what happens to the character and how they fit into their society
the lesson you learned about the wider world from reading this book.
Watch this impromptu speech by Lilly Watkins, who has used her previous knowledge of a book she has read as material for an impromptu on the topic of 'Getting distracted'.
Keep adding to your ideas notebook whenever you read, hear or view something that makes you think!
Getting distracted
Duration: 01:164. Practise!
4. Practise!
Now that you have some ideas to play with and know how to respond quickly to a stimulus topic, it’s time to do lots of practice.
Play one-word impromptus
This game will help you to build up your confidence when responding to impromptu topics.
Using the Word Generator:
Go to the game: Subjects
Go to the category: Travel
Press 'New Word'.
Use the word that comes up as a stimulus for a 30-second impromptu.
Keep practising until you can build up to 1 minute and then 2 minutes.
Try other categories such as Feelings and Emotions, or Art.
If you come across a word you don’t know, look it up and write a definition in your ideas notebook.
You can also cut up lots of words and put them into your hat for your own one-word impromptus.
Try to relate the word to a bigger idea. It might remind you of something you have read or viewed or talked about with someone else.
Return to the Word Generator:
Go to the game: Wordplay
Go to the category: Idioms and Sayings
Press 'New Word'.
Use the saying that comes up as a stimulus for your 1-2 minute impromptu.
If you come across a saying you haven’t heard before, look it up and write the meaning down in your ideas notebook.
Using the same stimulus you used at the beginning of this lesson (changes, the next step or good news), record yourself (or ask someone to record you) again, speaking on this topic for 1-2 minutes.
How have you improved?
Watch this excellent impromptu speech by Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition for Years 5 and 6 2019 state champion, Ava Dupont, as she delivers her impromptu speech entitled 'What a mess'.
What a mess
Duration: 02:11Consider what you can learn from Ava in terms of her general knowledge, her use of the topic and the way she has carefully structured her speech to make an important point for her audience.
Comment on how Ava has:
come up with a strong beginning
identified an issue
explained why this is a problem we should care about
offered a solution to the issue
used the topic as the title of her speech
used personal experience, general knowledge and narrative elements to explore the topic
finished with a strong conclusion.
You may also like to complete this @The Arts Unit Creative Class.
Congratulations! You have completed this @The Arts Unit Creative Class.
Remember this is not about learning speeches off by heart or trying to force a topic into your speech. It is about being well-informed and interested in the world around you so that you can take the precious opportunity given to you to come up with a persuasive and worthwhile speech for your listeners.
Good luck with your impromptu speaking!
Third-party content attributions
Third-party content attributions
"Word cloud" by narciso1 is licenced under the Simplified Pixabay Licence.
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