Speaking Rules!: Classroom Games, Exercises, and Activities for Creating Masterful Speakers, Presenters, and Storytellers

Luke Lawson is a teacher and administrator in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

For many students, speaking in front of a group can be an overwhelming
and even terrifying experience. This step-by-step guide to speaking in
the classroom is divided into two parts. Part 1 includes chapters on
imagining, listening, remembering, developing rapport with an audience,
using body language, exploring voice, showing composure, improvising,
interpreting, and critiquing. Part 2 focuses on evaluating oral language
performance and developing content for performance.

While the book is aimed at a broad audience of teachers from grades 4
to 12, the content that is aimed specifically at students has an
elementary and junior-high feel (as we see in the following
“outrageous opener”: “Lightening struck our house last week and my
father is still glowing”); a better approach would have been to
organize the book’s chapters by grade level. Finally, Miyata’s
suggestion that a mere 15–20 minutes a week is sufficient to develop
these speaking skills is simply not realistic.