Teach Public Speaking Skills with an Engaging Slide Deck

Oral presentation skills are a vital part of the ELA curriculum, helping students become confident speakers and effective communicators.

This comprehensive slide deck has been designed by our team to teach your students about public speaking skills in an age-appropriate manner. The slide deck takes students step-by-step through the oral presentation process, starting with planning and writing a speech, moving through to the rehearsal stage, and finishing with delivery techniques.

The presentation focuses particularly on public speaking skills. These are the skills that students will need to draw on to make their speeches engaging for their audience. The public speaking skills featured in the presentation are:

• Pitch and tone
• Pace
• Volume
• Eye contact
• Gestures

This resource will demystify the speech-writing process for students, providing tips on how oral presentations can be written and delivered with confidence and a sense of purpose.

Improve Public Speaking Skills Using This Resource

This versatile public speaking skills presentation can be used to support explicit teaching, but it has many other potential uses, too! Here are some ideas for how you might use this resource in your classroom to extend your teaching of public speaking skills:

• Public Speaking Bootcamp –  Turn the slide deck into a week-long oral presentation training camp. Assign different speaking skills each day and have students demonstrate them in fun daily challenges.
• Peer Coaching Sessions – After rehearsing a speech with a partner, encourage students to use slides to give each other constructive feedback using the terminology they’ve learned.
• Digital Reflection Journal – During the process of planning, writing and rehearsing an oral presentation, have students record a digital journal that reflects on their progress at each stage of the process.

Download to Improve Public Communication Skills

This slideshow downloads as either a Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation. Use the dropdown menu on the Download button to access your preferred version. (Note: You will be prompted to make a copy of the Google Slides presentation before accessing it.)

Project the resource onto your screen and work through the slides as a class for a lesson on preparing an oral presentation. Whether you use the whole presentation or select slides for specific lessons, everything you need is included and ready to go.

This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a teacher in Michigan and a Teach Starter collaborator.

More Resources for Teaching Public Speaking Skills

Looking for more resources to use in your public speaking unit? Teach Starter has you covered! Click below to browse more curriculum-aligned, teacher-created activities.

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