@The Arts Unit Creative Classes

Successfully speaking

Teacher notes

The secret behind great speeches

Student public speaking resource developed by The Arts Unit

Years 7 to 10 public speaking

What will your students learn?

Your students will:

  • consider what ‘public speaking’ means and the relationship between context, purpose and audience

  • analyse the specific context, purpose and common characteristics of a number of famous speeches

  • reflect on the difference between great speeches and less successful ones.

Syllabus outcomes

English K-10 Syllabus

Stage 4

  • EN4-1A: responds to and composes texts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis and pleasure.

  • EN4–3B: uses and describes language forms, features and structures of texts appropriate to a range of purposes, audiences and contexts.

  • EN4-7D: demonstrates understanding of how texts can express aspects of their broadening world and their relationships within it.

Stage 5

  • EN5-3B: selects and uses language forms, features and structures of texts appropriate to a range of purposes, audiences and contexts, describing and explaining their effects on meaning.

  • EN5-5C: thinks imaginatively, creatively, interpretively and critically about information and increasingly complex ideas and arguments to respond to and compose texts in a range of contexts.

  • EN5-7D: understands and evaluates the diverse ways texts can represent personal and public worlds.

Suggestions for how to use this resource with your students

Teachers are advised to check if the content of the selected speeches is appropriate to the learning level of their students and substitute other material if necessary.

This is a lesson about identifying the specific context and purpose of a speech. This can help students to become more engaging and influential speakers as they reflect on the examples of famous speeches.

Communicate with your students about how you would like them to submit responses to you before sending them this activity.

You may also be interested in Debating and public speaking Art Bites videos from @The Arts Unit Art Bites.


Suggested responses for Task 2

Speech 1

  • Speaker: Earl Spencer

  • Context: Funeral for his sister Princess Diana

  • Purpose: Eulogy – to honour and celebrate another individual

  • Aspects of delivery: Very formal tone, anecdotes and personal information about Diana, inclusive tone, speaks TO Diana – ‘Life without you is very difficult'.

Speech 2

  • Speaker: Adam Goodes

  • Context: Australian of the Year Ceremony

  • Purpose: Acceptance speech – to say thank you for an award

  • Aspect of delivery: Begins with welcome to country, repetition of ‘we can choose', personal experiences of racism, conciliatory and grateful tone but links to bigger picture.

Speech 3

  • Speaker: Greta Thunberg

  • Context: UN Climate Action Summit

  • Purpose: Address to world leaders – persuade others to do something differently

  • Aspect of delivery: Personal experience, emotional tone, repeated rhetorical question, ‘How dare you?’, uses statistics and facts, direct address, ‘you’.

Speech 4

  • Speaker: Kevin Rudd

  • Context: Official Apology to Indigenous Australians

  • Purpose: Arouse sympathy for an important issue, acknowledge responsibility for said issue

  • Aspect of delivery: Formal tone, facts and policies but uses understated metaphors – blemished chapter, nations turns a new page. Repetition of inclusive language – ‘we fellow Australians’, anaphora of 'We apologise’ epistrophe of 'We say sorry', personal pronoun ‘I’ used to take responsibility as prime minister.

Speech 5

  • Speaker: Emma Gonzalez

  • Context: March for our lives – anti-gun rally

  • Purpose: Protest – arouse sympathy for an issue.

  • Aspects of delivery: Emotional tone, personal anecdotes and real names of victims, emotive language, ‘cold grip of gun violence’, repetition, anaphora ‘no one’, epistrophe 'never’, lists of names, pace and extreme dramatic pause used for effect.

Collection of student work

  • Google Form: create a Google form with activities and/or questions. Students can also upload any files they create. Email this form to your students with the Creative Class link and all your student responses will be combined in a Google sheet.

  • Google Classroom Assignment: create an assignment or a quiz in your Google Classroom with activities and/or questions. Students can also upload any files they create.

  • MS Teams: create a quiz or assignment in your class team drive where students can submit responses and upload any files they create.

  • Email: ask your students to email you any responses and files they create.

  • Flipgrid: a website that allows teachers to create 'grids' to facilitate video discussions. Each grid is a message board where teachers can pose questions called 'topics'. Students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display.

  • Jamboard: an interactive whiteboard which can be used for class feedback.

For further support on how to create these resources

Offline access

Download and print this document to send to students with limited access to online resources.

Successful speaking - The Arts Unit @home Creative Classes.docx

Would you like to promote your school and showcase your students' work as a result of engaging in this Creative Class?

Help us celebrate the fantastic work of NSW public school students by emailing photos or videos that you have permission to share and comments on how your students enjoyed the class to digital.artsunit@det.nsw.edu.au.

Please include the Creative Class title and your school name in the email so we can share on The Arts Unit social media and our website.

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