Colson watched a video of his speech from last week and made his own critique. He learned how to use personification, a form of figurative language, when writing or giving a speech. He studied the origin of the poem, "Old Glory." He listened to the orator, Vann Moris, giving his rendition of the poem, "Old Glory."

Colson reviewed and discussed the reason for and the importance of the Gettysburg Address. He has been assigned to memorize the speech. He practiced giving his self-introductory speech in the lunchroom with a small audience during class time. He gave the real speech during lunch to a much larger audience of teachers and students. He did an amazing job!

Colson practiced giving his self-introductory speech with a podium. He watched a video of the Gettysburg Address and then answered written questions pertaining to the story.

Colson worked on and made a practice presentation of his Self-Introductory speech. He made some adjustments and will present it again next week. He read a speech about public speaking and answered comprehension questions about what he read.

We explored the essential elements for a successful speech. He learned what a speech is, that speeches can be used for persuasion, narratives, expository writings, descriptive writings, and how-to writings. We discussed the different types of public speaking-demonstrative, informative and persuasive.

Jonathan and I read the picture book THE THREE QUESTIONS. I then discussed how to do a book talk. I modeled one and walked Jonathan through one for the book. Jonathan did a great job.
We spent some time on discussing how you should begin a speech. We talked about how you should say something to capture the audience's attention. We then discussed how to do an informative speech. Jonathan did one on elephants. He used his I-pad to research. He did a good job. We then talked about how to give a demonstration speech. Jonathan gave me a good one on how to build a lego model. We then read a few poems from the poetry book. Reading poetry is considered oral interpretation in the Public Speaking world.

Jonathan and I discussed how to construct an informative speech. Using his ipad for information, Jonathan constructed a brief informative speech on the executioner bee. I then read to Jonathan from Bruce Lasky's poem book. Jonathan liked one of the short ones and read it several times and almost memorized it. We then ended the session with Jonathan and I writing a creative poem about bees.

We were to continue working on his pantomime.

Jonathan and I continue to learn the words to the song for his pantomime performance. We talked about pairing emotions and movements to the words. We listened to the song a couple of times. Jonathan recited the words. He knows about three quarters of the song. Because he can get the song on his I-pad, I told him to listen to it at least once a day to try to learn the last couple of stanzas of words.

Jonathan and I continued to work on learning the lyrics to "How Far I'll Go" from the Disney movie "Moana." We listened to the song a couple times. Jonathan has done a great job. He knows about 75% of the song's words. We need to learn the ending. We just started to put in some movements/gestures. Jonathan says that after we learn all of the words, we need to work on putting in the appropriate emotions:). He does so well!