I would like to teach a public speaking class to some high school and middle school students. I am going to call it a Public Speaking Club, but it will be more like workshops, once a week for about an hour.
Does anyone know of any websites I can go to in order to find a curriculum, or possibly just give me some help on creating different exercises to help the students become better public speakers?
I want it to be fun!
Thanks 
Where are you located? Every state and many districts are involved in competitive speech tournaments. There, the public speaking events would be extemporaneous and impromptu, and maybe a few others. Try speaking to teachers to see if speech exists. If not, the National Forensic League has many resources to help you get started.
I know this isn’t the same thing, but since the league already exists, it’s educational and the students will compete for awards. That extra incentive really will help them work hard. This site has help for working on "extemporaneous" which is a limited preparation activity which asks people to answer a question related to current events in a 7 minute speech. There are also curriculum guides. Check the second site to contact someone in your area for getting started.
September 26th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
The most famous one is Toastmasters, which works with people who are petrified of public speaking and those just wanting to get better. They have it at a lot of colleges and a lot of business use it. They even have a place on the website for if you want to start a club in your area. I don’t know what joining entails, but I assume it’ll have a lot of great advice and give you everything you need. Even if you don’t want to fill out the form to join, it looks like they have links with advice on the website.
I would say the most important thing would be to ease the people actually scared into it. Maybe first talking with each other as a group in a circle in a casual setting, then having each person stand up while they talk, to actually addressing the group alone. Let them choose thier own topics at first, then give them funny topics or random ones to make it less stressful.
http://www.toastmasters.org/
Good luck! Sounds like a great idea!
References :
September 26th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Where are you located? Every state and many districts are involved in competitive speech tournaments. There, the public speaking events would be extemporaneous and impromptu, and maybe a few others. Try speaking to teachers to see if speech exists. If not, the National Forensic League has many resources to help you get started.
I know this isn’t the same thing, but since the league already exists, it’s educational and the students will compete for awards. That extra incentive really will help them work hard. This site has help for working on "extemporaneous" which is a limited preparation activity which asks people to answer a question related to current events in a 7 minute speech. There are also curriculum guides. Check the second site to contact someone in your area for getting started.
References :
http://www.nflonline.org/CoachingResources/CoachingResources
http://www.nflonline.org/AboutNFL/DistrictContacts