Informative Speech

As an AVID teacher, I try to develop lesson and/or create opportunities for students perform speeches during the school year.  My reason behind this is twofold: 1.) It is important for students to be able to organize their ideas and thoughts into an efficient and concise speech and 2.) It is important for students to be comfortable presenting in front of small or large groups of people.  With my current group of AVID students (who I have had for two years), the second reason is not as important because they love talking in front of the classroom and sharing their speeches.  Seriously.  They love it.  In my seven years of teaching, I have never had a group of students who were so comfortable being in front of other students and truly enjoyed public speaking.  However, the whole process of creating an organized and concise speech is a bit difficult for them which is why it is something we frequently practice.

Next week, my AVID students will be presenting their Informative Speeches.  To help them organize their speeches, they completed:

• An Informative Speech Map (Link)
• An Informative Speech Outline (Link)
• A Google Slide Presentation (FYI – Slides Carnival is AMAZING!)

Our speech process is much more refined this year and I am really excited about this speeches…!

Yet…

If you are a teacher who has sat through numerous student speeches at one time, you understand how the speeches can be come tedious, drawn out, and, for lack of a better word, a bit boring.  Not necessarily for the teacher, I tend to enjoy the student speeches, especially when it is not the same speech over and over.  However, it can be quite boring for the students that have to sit through the speeches.

So, my solution: Let’s gamify our student speeches!

Bingo: The Informative Speech Edition

I realized that gamifying the student speeches was exactly what my students (and myself) needed to keep us focused and engaged during the 30+ speeches.  (The speeches are only 1-2 minutes, but still…!)  Bingo seemed like the perfect solution!  I decided I would collect the 5 vocabulary words from each students speech and turn it into a Bingo game.  The students would need to listen to the speeches to hear when the words were spoken.

Interested in creating your own Bingo game for student speeches?  Follow the directions below!

Step #1: Use a Google Form to collect the vocabulary words (See below.)

Step #2: Open up the Google Sheet created from the Google Form and combine all rows into one cell.

• This part can be a bit tricky.  You can choose to combine all rows into one cell manually (i.e. copy and paste) or use the following formula into the formula bar.  Then hit “Enter”.
  • Formula: =arrayformula(concatenate(filter(c2:c;c2:c<>“”)&“, “))

Step #3: Go HERE to generate your Bingo Cards.  Copy and paste your words into the generator.

• Select all of the specifics and details for your cards.

Step #4: Click “Generate Bingo” Cards and Print!

This is still something I am waiting to try out in my classroom – So, hopefully, I will be editing this post next week with a positive review!