When audiences listen to a speech, most of their attention – around 93% – is directed not to the actual words, but rather 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 spend most of their time in this program focusing on developing their own personal speaking manner, helping them engage with their audiences to a much greater degree (whilst also finding a moment here and there to cover the other essential elements of a speech like structure).

During the upcoming term, we will be offering our weekly programs 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.

Notably, the difference in price 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) associated with running classes in-person.

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. Local transmission rates are currently low, and the Government is acting very 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 three elements are:

1. 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;
2. 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
3. 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 Leopards course is a beginner level program.

This course assumes no particular knowledge – students are more than welcome to join the program with little (or even no) public speaking experience.  We all have to start somewhere – and this is the perfect place to do so.

That said, we usually recommend that students do two terms of our Presentation Skills Leopards program to ensure that they cover all the basics of public speaking:

• one focusing on ‘method’ (the best way to structure a speech); and
• the other on ‘manner’ (the way that students present to audiences).

Our Leopards program is also appropriate for students who have already completed our Presentation Skills Tabby Cats or Presentation Skills Tigers holiday programs (or alternatively our Tabby Cats Online or Tigers Online programs) – the Leopards course goes through a range of different skills, and uses various different activities, meaning that students are able (and encouraged) to do this program, even if they’ve already completed our holiday programs.

That said, if your child has already done multiple holiday programs with us – or has formal public speaking training from another source – they may get more out of our more advanced Presentation Skills Lions program.

Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss what’s best for your child!

After completing the Presentation Skills Leopards Manner program, students should:

• have participated in several activities (that feel like games) in a nurturing class environment, each of which help break down the stigma that public speaking is something to be feared;
• understand the essential elements of a speech, with a particular focus on what makes excellent speaking manner;
• have been given multiple opportunities to present to their class in each and every session; and
• have a much greater appreciation of how fun public speaking can be!

Connecting with Audiences

The first few sessions are designed to help students get to know one another and feel comfortable in the classroom setting.  Amongst various speaking activities, students will be exposed to the concept of an audience, and come to understand that speeches are about finding a connection between their personal interests and those watching their presentation.

Developing Speech Ideas

As students progress, they will spend a couple of sessions working on forming their own opinions and turning those opinions into speeches.  They will have multiple opportunities to share and justify those opinions to their class – placing a particular focus on the manner they use to present those opinions.

Developing Speaking Manner

From the mid-point of the term, students will move away from the theory around public speaking, and start spending much more of their time focusing on developing their own personal speaking manner. Rather than concentrating on concepts, these sessions revolve around practise, feedback, reflection and implementation – the four critical steps to improving one’s performance.

Parent Presentations

The term ends with a parent presentation – an opportunity for students to present to an adult audience.  Parent presentations are not only a great way to help students develop their confidence, but also represent an opportunity to showcase what they’ve learned.  Students generally spend the last couple of sessions preparing and practising their speeches for the presentation.

For physical classes, we’ll make an assessment closer to the end of the term as to whether we can run presentations in person. If government restrictions still prevent parents from entering the classrooms, we’ll either film their presentations or potentially live stream them for parents to watch from home!

Our classes vary in size every workshop depending on how many bookings we receive – however, the maximum size of our Presentation Skills Leopards class is around eight students with one coach.

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!

By the end of each program, students will have:

• a feedback sheet, prepared individually for them by their coach, which goes through what they’ve improved on, and what still needs some work;
• a certificate recognising their achievements;
• a course booklet that covers everything they’ve learned throughout the program;
• the speech that they prepared for their final presentations; and
• hopefully a more positive perspective on public speaking!

We have a specially designed holiday workshop for our tiny tots called Presentation Skills Bumblebees. Unfortunately, we do not have an appropriate term program suitable for kindy at this stage (although we’re working on one!).

Our Leopards and Lions term (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.