When audiences listen to a speech, the bulk of their attention – around 93% – is directed not to the words that you’re saying, but to your physical and verbal manner.  Given this, it is crucial to get this part of public speaking right to ensure that any audience is listening.

Utilising activity based, experiential learning, students will focus less on the matter and method of speechcrafting, and much more on its presentation to an audience.

Whilst students will cover all areas of manner, particular focus will be placed on three areas – namely stance, vocabulary and eye contact.

Each session is targeted at helping students create and present more engaging speeches, and boosting the relationships (and therefore interest) between the audience and the speaker.

There are two groups of students who would benefit from our Presentation Skills Tigers program.

The first group are those who have previous formal coaching in public speaking.  This may be from one of our programs – perhaps our Tabby Cats holiday program, or our Leopards or Lions weekly term programs – from another provider, or potentially through their school.  The Presentation Skills Tigers program also changes from holiday to holiday, so students are more than welcome (and even encouraged) to give it a couple of tries.  If you’re not sure whether your child has enough experience, please get in touch and we can chat about your circumstances.

The second group is for students who have a little experience, but are naturally more confident and would be able to hold their own with other, more experienced students.  Whilst we would still recommend that these students still give our Presentation Skills Tabby Cats program a try first, we understand that dates and locations don’t always line up.  Given this, we often enrol a few students without much experience.  If you think your child may fall into this category, please reach out and we can discuss it with you!

After completing the Presentation Skills Tigers program, students should:

• have taken a deep dive into a range of different elements of good speaking manner, including stance, eye contact and boosting vocabulary;
• understand how to apply good speaking manner when presenting a speech; and
• have been given a range of opportunities to present to their class in each and every 1.5 hour session.

Strong Stances

The first day is designed to help students get to know one another, and feel comfortable in the online classroom setting. Alongside a range of fun speaking activities and some revision, students will look at how best to hold themselves and their palm cards, and how this impacts their influence over their audience.

Boosting Vocabulary

As students progress, they will start looking into their vocabulary, and how to come up with more interesting and expressive ways to explain concepts. This is coupled with a number of activities to help students embrace more meaningful presentations.

Increasing Eye Contact

On the second day, students will move onto eye contact.  By developing the skill of reducing full sentences to dot points and using strategically placed visual clues, students are encouraged to spend more time looking their audience in the eyes and forming a stronger relationship with them.

Final Presentations

In the afternoon of the last day, students will put these skills together to finalise and give their final presentations to the class. This is a great opportunity for students to present to an audience in a more formal manner, which not only helps them develop their confidence, but also represents an opportunity to showcase what they’ve learned.

Our classes vary in size every holiday depending on how many bookings we receive – however, the maximum size of our Tigers class is 8 students with one coach, and 16 students with two coaches.

If there aren’t any spots left, it’s usually because we’ve hit capacity – please get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do about either opening an extra class, fitting your child into the existing class, or putting you on a waitlist in case any students pull out!

After each program, students will go home with:

• a feedback sheet prepared by their coach, which outlines what they’ve improved on during the course, and what they could continue to work on in the future;
• a certificate recognising that they have completed the Presentation Skills Tigers workshop;
• a workbook containing any notes that the students wrote down during the course; and
• a better understanding of how public speaking works in the real world!

If you’re interested in doing another holiday program, we would recommend that students give our Presentation Skills Tigers program another go.  As mentioned above, the program has a wide range of different focuses, meaning that no two programs are the same – students are even able to do it multiple times over the same holiday!

Alternatively, if you’re keen on a weekly term program, we would recommend our Presentation Skills Leopards program.  The Leopards course takes persuasive speeches to the next level, helping students develop complete speeches over the course of a term.

We strongly recommend waiting until Year 1 before enrolling in our Tabby Cats or Tigers holiday programs, or our Leopards and Lions term programs – all our Cats programs require students to be able to write at least simple sentences, as well as read their own handwriting and instructions on the board, which most Kindergarten students are unfortunately not able to do.  This may well lead to those students feeling inferior to the rest of the class, creating new fears around public speaking – the exact opposite of what we hope to achieve.

If you think that your child has sufficient reading and writing skills, we would be more than happy to talk it through with you (although we would definitely recommend that they do the Presentation Skills Tabby Cats program first!) – alternatively, we would also be more than happy to add you to our email list (see below) so we can let you know when bookings open when your child is old enough to join!