We all know “good” and “bad” speakers when we see them, but it's shocking how often we teachers either ignore bad habits, don't explicitly teach good habits, or accidentally reinforce bad speaking with the types of speaking we assign. IN OUR DEFENSE, speaking in all its forms is the category of English class that is usually given the least attention in teacher-ed programs, so when we attempt to teach it ourselves, we have to either self-teach best practices or fall back on what we remember from our own days in grades K-12... but some of those actions belong in the past. (I should also mention that some of these are things I learned the hard way, so by no means do I claim to be a perfect teacher! Learn from my mistakes to save yourself some stress.) Though there are always exceptions to these suggestions, here are some situations that English teachers should seriously think twice about before we assign and assess speaking. ...

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.  Do you believe in the power of presentation literacy? Ever think that your students are capable of more than eyes-down, wimpy presentations with Death By PowerPoint slides? After a year of teaching TED-style speaking (and not just in a speech class), I'm even more convinced that presentation literacy matters, that our teens can be coached to a higher bar, and that public speaking doesn't have to be the ugly stepsister of the English curriculum. ...

Okay, sure - TED talks are cool, and I'm not the only teacher who plays them for my students. Many intuitive educators are playing TED videos at school (or assigning them as homework) to teach public speaking, listening skills, or the talk's content itself. But this year, my eighth graders will take TED to a whole new level in our classroom. ...