I devised the following activity in 2014 with my senior class and since it proved a huge success among the students, I proposed it to my two senior classes who accepted it willingly so that we carried it out from February to March. Once a week three students have presented to the rest of the class a TED Talk of their choice. This activity was meant to make them improve their competence of public speaking and their oral skills for the final exam. By Monday 5.p.m. they were required to post the link of the chosen TedTalk video in a Google shared document, so that everybody could watch it and come to class ready to ask a question.
ASSIGNMENT: During your presentation – max. 10 minutes:
- Introduce and summarize the main ideas of Talk (you can use a Power Point uploaded onto Google Drive or Google slides or Prezi or Emaze)
- Show an excerpt (max 2 minutes)
- Express your personal point of view on the topic (critical sense and thinking).
- The teacher & schoolmates will ask you questions – 5 minutes after your 10 m’ speech.
Here are the links to the TedTalks websites. If you’ve got an iPad, there’s also the App TedTalk with subtitles.http://www.ted.com/playlists/129/ted_under_20; http://www.ted.com https://youtu.be/uAKXTZEFpgE https://youtu.be/idjJMqKGEDI
Here’s my TEDTALK PRESENTATION RUBRIC
NOW, WRITE YOUR NAME & TITLE OF TEDTALK, paste the link of the video and of your presentation in the Padlet of your class I’ve just created. This way they’re all shareable & visible as a sort of class Portfolio for the exam.
I must tell you that I’ve enjoyed your presentations very much and I’m very proud of you all, as I’m completely aware of the tremendous improvement you’ve made in these four years (one in the case of 5BSca) together. Even the shiest ones among you, have surprised me and the whole class, while you were talking with self-confidence and enthusiasm about something that sparked your curiosity and was, therefore, meaningful and relevant to you since not chosen by the teacher 🙂 Some topics were totally new to me and I’ve discovered new lands and learnt new things, which is what I love the most about my job. So, thank you and … keep it up 🙂