Most of us feel butterflies when called upon to speak in public. It is natural for kids too, to feel nervous at the opportunity of addressing a room full of people. This is why it is essential to enhance public speaking for kids in their elementary years so that they get ample time to master it. Having excellent communication skills will take your child a long way. Communication is the backbone of our society. This life skill is essential in every walk of our lives. Mastering public speaking for kids will help them build important connections, enhance personal relations, and motivate changes in society. Before diving into the ways of improving public speaking for kids, let’s take a better look at what exactly is meant by public speaking.
What is Public Speaking?
Basically, public speaking is presenting your thoughts in front of a crowd. Merriam Webster also defines public speaking as “the art of effective oral communication with an audience”. Everyone has to deal with the situation of addressing an audience at some point in their lives, whether at school, the workplace, or everyday life. Public speaking for kids is a crucial skill to turn them into confident speakers. When children acquire these skills at an early age, they get an immediate edge over others.
Everyday Public Speaking
Informative: You must have observed when your boss informs you about a project or when you have to give your progress report in an office meeting. These daily life experiences count under informative speaking. Informative speaking is nothing but sharing any information with others. The examples might include academic lectures and public announcements providing general information.
Persuasive: Persuasive speaking generally happens in a formal speech or debate when candidates put forward their views and arguments to prove their point and convince the audience. But we come across persuasive speaking in our everyday life as well. Deciding a place for dinner or where to head for the trip this month also involves persuasive speaking skills.
Entertaining: When the speaker’s purpose is to entertain the audience rather than just passing out information, public speaking for entertainment is used. It can involve story reading, poetry reciting, stand-up comedies, or hosting an award ceremony.
Why do kids need public speaking?
The main purpose of public speaking courses for kids is to enhance their communication skills at an early age to express their thoughts and ideas clearly. Communicating with people involves conveying your message to the other person. Sometimes, it is simply putting your thoughts out there, but public speaking often involves persuasion to convince or influence a group of people. So, public speaking for kids prepares their ground for the next stages of their lives.
Influence the audience
The main goal of communication is to state thoughts clearly in front of people. Public speaking for kids is an essential skill that will equip young kids with persuasive speaking. With public speaking skills, children learn how to express themselves with a compelling force to have a beneficial influence over people.
Develop leadership skills
We all come across many examples of great leaders whose radical thoughts and ideas have motivated others to take action. Speaking in public demonstrates bravery and shows leadership skills. It reflects that you dare to do something that most people fear. With early training in public speaking, children can lay a strong foundation for their future, learn to share their ideas with confidence, and carve out their place in this world.
Enhance communication skills
The main objective of the public speaking course for kids is to enhance their overall communication skills. The course focuses on verbal and non-verbal communication to transform them into effective speakers. Communication skills are essential in our everyday conversation, social interactions, and even to advance in our careers. So, public speaking skills for kids teach them how to present their thoughts clearly and coherently.
Inform effectively
Besides the content of information, our way of presenting ideas is also essential in deciding if our audience is convinced. While giving a speech or presenting an argument in a debate, we often share important bits of information with the audience. For people to listen to you, you mustn’t sound boring while sharing the information. This is why public speaking skills for kids hone them from the very beginning and teaches them ways of effective communication.
Develop Social Skills
Public speaking for kids is a crucial life skill that prepares them to engage and interact with people. The asset of public speaking for kids will help them easily interact with people of shared interests. Public speaking is a soft skill that is inclined towards interpersonal behaviour. In simple words, public speaking is based on how the speaker engages with people. So, acquiring this life skill at an early age helps children to make important connections and enhance personal relationships.
Advance in Career
Public speaking skills can help children prepare for the next stage of their life. Whether in the high school years or in college, having these skills will give your child an edge over others. A confident speaker will never shy away from giving interviews or convincing the whole team about your idea.
How to Improve Public Speaking for Kids?
Public speaking for kids is essential in their everyday lives and prepares them for a better future. Public speaking is a skill, and practice is a must to acquire it. However, it doesn’t have to be learned in a stressful manner. There are many fun ways of indulging in games and activities that can hone public speaking skills in children. So, let’s dive right in:
Five effective ways to improve public speaking for kids
1. Games and activities
Learning the skill of public speaking doesn’t have to be an exhaustive experience for your kids. There are many fun activities and games to improve public speaking for kids. These games can improve self-confidence and develop effective communication skills.
- Connect the ‘nouns’: Invite your kid’s friends at home and practice this game together. Have all the children pick three random nouns, and the speaker will have to connect these nouns to develop a story. It is an impromptu game that will boost confidence in kids.
- Speak your mind: This activity is literally all about speaking your mind. Have your kid read a few lines from a story or some general information and let them talk about that. Even if the kid is speaking gibberish, it doesn’t matter. This activity mainly helps to focus on voice and non-verbal communication.
- Describe what you see: This is a fun way to enhance communication skills in children. While walking or driving with your kids, ask them to describe what they see in their surroundings. The basic rule of this game is to speak for a minute in English.
- Make up a definition: This is again a great activity to develop the presence of mind and self-confidence. Ask your kid to define a word that they are unaware of. Public presentations are all about confidence and presenting thought with a sense of authority. Focus on your kid’s tone of voice and body language.
- Alternative Ending: Pick your child’s favourite television show/ movie/story and ask your child to create an alternative ending. This fun activity will teach children to assert their thoughts with creativity and confidence.
2. Public speaking apps on the phone
As the world is witnessing new digital advancements every day, it is only natural to adapt to the new age of technology and learn important skills. Many mobile apps help you improve your child’s public speaking skills.
- Orai: It is a great tool for those kids who want to work on their speech and presentation. This app has advanced voice recognition technology that listens to your speech and provides comments on your performance. The comments are related to the speaker’s voice’s clarity of speech and energy. With the help of this app, you can significantly improve public speaking for kids.
- Six Minutes: With the help of this app, kids can improve their English listening, grammar, and vocabulary through simple English conversations. Sometimes, it might get challenging to engage kids with lessons. This app comes with 6-minute vocabulary and grammar lessons to make learning easier.
- Zoom.us: Kids enjoy learning together with their friends. This connecting tool can make public speaking for kids easier. Group activities are a great way of learning new skills and giving each other preparation tips on how to tackle a problem. Listening to each other gives them new and refreshing ideas and techniques to perform better.
- Book Widgets: This app allows you to create many interactive quizzes, worksheets, and other engaging exercises for your kids to improve their English. The best thing is to grade all of these exercises in real time to mark your child’s progress.
- SpeakerClock: One of the most important things while giving a public presentation is time. If the speech is too long, the audience will get bored and lose interest in what the speaker is saying. During classroom presentations and debate activities, time plays an important role. So, this app which is basically a ‘talking clock’ presents the time to the speaker so that they can keep track of their time and prepare their presentation according to the time limit.
- Ummo: This is again a great app to identify the pace, volume, and clarity in speech. Its advanced voice recognition technology will listen to your kid’s speech and detect filler words to enhance the performance of the speech.
3. Watch TED Talks
Listening to experts and how they present can help in acquiring the skill of public speaking for kids. Ted Talks is a sophisticated/prestigious platform where all the learned and expert speakers come to give presentations. Listening to such a great variety of information will develop critical thinking skills and also it will increase curiosity in kids to know new things.
You will find many impressive Ted Talks given by kids as well. Watching children presenting themselves confidently in front of a crowd of thousands of people will boost your kid’s morale. It is always inspiring and motivating to witness these brilliant kids mastering high-level presentation skills.
These kids giving Ted Talks show that children can not only learn to read and write in their preteen years, but they can develop exceptional verbal skills and touch millions of lives. Watching kids giving a presentation of their eloquence, wit, and humour is encouraging for even adults. So, have your child watch these videos on youtube to motivate them.
4. Movies
Kids love watching their favourite movies and TV shows, so why not turn this fun pastime activity into acquiring the skill of public speaking for kids. It is a great way to teach them many valuable techniques in an easy way.
- Movie Break Down: After watching a movie, ask your child to break down the movie into three parts- ‘starting’, ‘middle’, and the ‘end’. This method is called sequencing which will help kids to organise information effectively. You can also use a short video on youtube initially to make it easy.
- Tell me what you see: For this activity, pick a movie that you have seen before. Play the movie and turn your back on the TV. Now ask your kid to describe what is happening in the movie. Include questions such as ‘what does the location look like’, ‘what are the prominent emotions in the scene’, etc. Try to guess the scene according to your kid’s description.
Watch these movies to improve public speaking for kids:
- The King’s Speech: This movie is about an impromptu King George VI who tries to overcome his speech stuttering with the help of a speech therapist and make himself a powerful monarch to steer the country through World War II.
- Larry Crowne: It teaches a lot about visual contact to engage an audience. This movie also highlights the importance of wit and humour in public speaking.
- Kid President: This movie shows that the qualities of humour and confidence are naturally innate in the kids and retaining these qualities will make them better speakers.
- My Fair Lady: It highlights the importance of practice and persistence to become an effective public speaker.
5. Public speaking courses for kids
Some children are naturally confident speakers and some needs guidance to overcome their fear and shyness. It is normal for a child to feel nervous when asked to speak in front of a crowd. But this fear of communicating with others restricts them from seeking big opportunities in life.
The need is to equip the kids to use their fear as a powerful tool for projecting their best selves and charm any audience with their magnetism and confidence. In the current times, communication skills are crucial in every walk of life. So, acquiring these skills at an early age is quite beneficial as the kids can continue with the process of learning and evolving through their middle and high school years.
The public speaking courses for kids help them build their learning foundation at an early age so that they can get an edge over others and use these life skills as adults. Many people are aware of the dire need to upskill their children in their elementary years as the world is becoming highly competitive.
The public speaking courses for kids provide them professional training to boost their confidence and hone communication skills. The courses include various engaging activities and exercises to get them to interact with other students in group activities to learn and practice this life skill.
Public speaking topics for kids
Even the expert speakers also feel nervous when they give their speech, but it is the amount of practice they do that makes them perfect. So, here are Public speaking topics and tips for kids to help them to master this skill:
Topics
- My Dream Career
- If I was the President, what would I do?
- The best day of my life.
- My favourite pastime activity and why?
- What is one thing that I would change about school?
- My favourite subject.
- What is the importance of games and physical activities?
- The funniest movie ever made.
- If I could talk to animals.
- If I had a superpower.
- What do I love about my mom and dad?
- My favourite food.
- What is the best thing about living on this planet?
- If I had the option of choosing my own planet, what would it be? And why?
- What is my dog thinking?
Tips To Prepare
- Teach your kid the use of voice modulation while preparing a speech.
- Focus on the tone and pace of their voice.
- Ask them to be loud and clear while speaking.
- Motivate them to speak with confidence.
- Explain the importance of making eye contact with the audience.
- Focus on their body language.
Advantages of attending courses in public speaking for kids
1. Battle fear
Public speaking courses for kids involve many worksheets and tasks that the kids need to perform in the given time. With the help of these courses, kids get a chance to participate in individual and group activities to practice their communication skills. As they engage with their fellow students, their fear of speaking in a room full of people reduces, and the kids become more self-assured.
2. Voice their opinions
As the kids grow old, they start developing their opinions about things that surround them. Many kids are confident in asserting their opinions and expressing what they feel about certain things, but the kids who are shy by nature often face problems in talking about their opinions. With the help of professional training in public speaking, they will overcome their shyness and never fear sharing their views.
3. Improves Academic Performance
Public speaking has a direct impact on children’s academic grades. Being good at public speaking also encourages the children to raise their hands more in class. The more they ask, the more they learn. The public speaking courses for kids work on improving their overall communication skills that also involve active listening. The kids don’t hold back from listening to different ideas with active listening.
4. Develop Self Control
Nurturing a strong community of like-minded people can lead to many positive changes in an individual’s life. Public speaking courses for kids prepare them from their elementary years to develop self-control and get along with others to become better and successful individuals.
Conclusion
Public speaking for kids is an essential life skill that can transform them into confident communicators. Like every other art, public speaking also requires plenty of practice to get a hold of it. Starting early training in kids will make it easier for them to grasp essential techniques such as voice modulation, active listening, effective use of body language, etc., and practice the skill. The public speaking courses for kids include many activities and exercises and professional guidance from expert instructors to shape their learning journey in the best possible manner.
FAQs
1. How do I help my child with public speaking?
- Start early.
- Motivate your child to write and share their ideas on different topics.
- Involve them in family discussions.
- Give positive feedback.
2. What are the five public speaking tips?
- Choose a topic that you are passionate about.
- Practice thoroughly.
- Imagine a room full of people while practising your speech.
- Turn your stress into motivation.
- Take deep breaths and meditate to calm yourself.
3. What is public speaking for elementary students?
Public speaking enhances the overall communication skills of elementary kids. The focus is on refining both the verbal and non-verbal skills of kids to make them effective speakers.
4. What is public speaking in simple words?
Public speaking is presenting your thoughts in front of a crowd. It requires the speaker to have excellent communication skills to engage the audience.
5. What is taught in public speaking?
- Effective communication skills.
- Making Eye Contact.
- Being expressive with the use of hand gestures.
- Expressing thoughts in a coherent manner.
- Sharing thoughts and ideas with confidence.
