When we listen to presentations, the clear majority of our attention – around 93% – isn’t spent listening to the actual words that people say. Instead, most of our attention goes towards the presenter’s speaking manner – their body language and the tone they use to speak.

Our January Holiday workshop aims to help students better Express Themselves, and take their speaking manner to the next level. Focusing on a range of ways students can make their speeches more engaging – from stance to gestures to tone – our coaches guide students through a range of activities that help them holistically build a more engaging speaking manner that allows students to more accurately express themselves.

Through combining these activities with individualised feedback and self-reflection, students will be able to come into their own, and develop their own personal brand when making speeches!

During the upcoming holidays, we will be offering many of our workshops both in-person and online.

For the most part, there is very little that separates our online and physical programs – both are interactive, cover the same theoretical concepts, and give students a range of opportunities to practice and develop their skills. Whilst some activities are different between the two, as some activities lend themselves better to physical or online classes, the actual learning outcomes remain the same for both classes.

Importantly, the timing of each workshop does differ:

• Our in-person workshop runs between 8:45am and 2:45pm over two days;
• Our online program runs between 9:30am and 1:30pm over three days, with a half-hour break at 11:30am.

Notably, the difference in price between each isn’t an indication of the quality of the program, or how much students will get out of the experience – both get the same amount of attention and care, and we’ve found some students develop better in an online environment.  The deviation instead is simply a result of the higher costs (such as venue hire, administrative staff and sanitation) associated with running classes face-to-face.

If you’re interested in learning more about how our online programs work, please check out the video below!

Whilst children appear to not be at particularly high risk from COVID-19, SSA places their safety (and the safety of our coaches) as our highest priority.  This emphasis on safety is the first tier of our teaching policy.

We generally consider the risk of transmission at our programs to be very unlikely.  This is for three reasons:

1. From a general perspective, whilst children are not immune, they do show substantially milder symptoms than adults, and appear to catch and transmit the virus at lower rates.
2. Despite high vaccination levels, the Government is still acting cautiously in removing restrictions – most people who catch the virus are quarantined, as are any known close contacts, which has significantly limited the spread of the virus.
3. We have put in place a range of extra protections that are reviewed continuously for best practice, and seek to keep students as safe as possible.

We have prepared our COVID-19 Action Plan, which outlines the three methods we are using to keep students safe.

Whilst you are very welcome to read the Action Plan in full, the four elements are:

1. Vaccination – all of our onsite staff are fully vaccinated, so they pose a substantially reduced risk to our students;
2. Symptom Testing – whilst we instruct all parents not to send students displaying symptoms (or awaiting test results), we will be using temperature checks and coach training to ensure that any students who show symptoms are isolated and removed from programs;
3. Limited Exposure – there are a range of steps in place to help ensure that students (and parents) socially distance, and limit the chance of spreading the virus; and
4. Enhanced Sanitation – we have adopted hand and surface cleaning regimens to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Additionally, we will also be continuing to offer online programs for the foreseeable future. This will help ensure that parents and students who are uncomfortable with physical classes have an alternative that allows them to feel safe, whilst still receiving a quality education in public speaking and debating.

Please check out our COVID-19 Action Plan here, or get in touch if you have any questions!

Our Presentation Skills Tigers workshop is designed for experienced students.

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, including 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 try it again and again.  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 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 Expressing Yourself workshop, 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 session.

Revision of Fundamental Concepts

The program starts with a succinct (but important) revision of the essential concepts covered in our beginner level programs, including audience engagement and speech structure. This helps set students up for the rest of the program and ensures that everyone starts on a similar level.

Strong Stances

The first day is designed to help students get to know one another, and feel comfortable in the 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, before moving onto the importance of hand gestures and how this influences 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

Finally, students take a deep dive into eye contact.  By developing the skill of reducing full sentences to dot points and using strategically placed visual cues, students are encouraged to spend more time looking at their audience in the eyes and forming a stronger relationship with them.

Lots of Practice

Throughout the workshop, students will be given a wide range of opportunities to put their newfound skills into practice and present in front of their peers – given students in this age group learn best by doing, there are plenty of practice speeches and speaking activities built into the program!

Our classes vary in size every holiday depending on how many bookings we receive – however, the maximum size of our Tigers class is 9 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 workshop, students will get to keep:

• 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 the key concepts that students covered during the workshop; and
• a better understanding of how public speaking works in a new context!

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 Year 1 & 2 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!