Texts have developed from the oral tradition in order to better share our important stories with others. We practice this idea in our classrooms by sharing important stories with students and discussing the implications of these stories and why we find them significant to our development as a human being, but how often do we actually orate our texts?
Some schools have a Declamation Day, where students orate a meaningful piece of writing, either original or not.
I know that we often call on our students to give oral presentation, read poetry, write and present oral speeches, and perform plays. However, I got to thinking what students could gain from orating other pieces of literature and what the process of memorizing and performing a piece of writing entails.
For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus delivers a moving speech in order to convince the judge and jury of Tom Robinson’s innocence. For a student to effectively perform that speech (or write and perform their own version of that speech), he/she would have to:
- Have a working knowledge of the text.
- Gain a thorough understanding of the character of Atticus, his personality, history, and motives.
- Understand the complexity of the situation that Atticus is in (facing an all white court when trying to defend a black man accused of rape).
- *Consider logic and reasoning that has worked in the past.
- *Developed an understanding of useful and effective rhetorical devices to enhance tone.
* If writing their own versions of the speech.
Whether a project for declamation is done within the class, or short oral readings are performed, I'm thinking that there is, indeed, great value in breathing performative life into our texts, just as our ancestors did.
I totally agree. I think that it has been somewhat controversial to include a "Public Speaking" curriculum here. I think it was brought up in a department meeting years ago when we were trying to decide on what "electives" we might like to teach.
ReplyDeleteWhile we all probably have components of public speaking in all of our classes, I'm experimenting this year with a "This I Believe" essay assignment with my AP class. It was an idea that was given to me during my AP Summer Institute training. Students will take a position and defend a belief but the final product will be an audio recording instead of a written assignment.
I'm hoping to also get them to post on the web. Here is the website:
http://thisibelieve.org/
I love "This I Believe"! I've had students write "credo"s before, and I got some pretty powerful work. I certainly don't enough with oration and/or memorizing text. I was never very good at memorization, and I don't know a whole lot about public speaking. It would introduce the students to a great deal, though, both about the microcosmic social interactions in the classroom as well as the macrocosm of civic engagement in the great big outside world.
ReplyDeleteI often assign a monologue project, where students write an original monologue in the voice of a character in a book they've read. There are a number of requirements, and one of these requirements it that they perform and record these monologues. They may choose not to be video-taped themselves, opting for objects, scenes, or their peers as a visual representation of the monologue, but they do have to "speak" their work.