Teaching seniors is an exciting, emotional experience. You’ve coached them through the bouts of senioritis, and celebrated the highs and lows of college acceptances, wait lists, and denials. With all the excitement at the end of year, it’s hard to get them to focus on anything academic.
There is a senior scrapbook tradition in English classes at my high school. Some seniors embrace it, creating masterpieces with photographs, captions, and all the scrapbooking paraphernalia they can fit. As a teacher, I think these are beautiful memory books, but I sympathize with the other students—the scrapbook-challenged—and I also question the academic merit and rigor of this assignment.
This speech was the answer to my personal dilemma. If students were inclined to create a scrapbook, they could certainly invest the time and energy (and money) outside of class to do it on their own. The speech, by design, would give them an opportunity to reflect on their high school years and to practice skills that may be more valuable to the majority after high school graduation.
The activity includes a two-page worksheet to guide students through the steps of drafting a speech, helpful hints for delivering a speech, a grading rubric, and an audience participation form to keep the class involved as each student delivers his/her speech.
The Entire Product is Editable!
It is my hope that you won’t need to edit anything, but as a teacher who likes to personalize activities for my class, I know having the capability to edit is nice. This would also enable sixth- or eighth-grade teachers to make the assignment fit for your classes (just delete the references to high school!).
I hope your students will enjoy this activity as much as mine did!