Training for Public Speaking Skills.

Created by: Mary Rose Formosa and Kenny Muscat.
Delivered by Kenny Muscat in Malta and Italy

The design of the training for public speaking skills

The training for public speaking skills was part of our Erasmus+ Transnational Youth Initiative: Exchange of Good Practices project with Dis…correre youth group of Molfetta, Italy. This course was organized so we can develop the public speaking skills to enable us to present our work on the exchange of good practices as Learning, Teaching and Training sessions for educators, youth workers and stakeholders at project end…..actually this training will serve us for life! 🙂

This training was delivered by youth trainer, Kenny Muscat, in a blended format. Six sessions were delivered online to both Maltese and Italian groups. These sessions prepared the groups for the remainder of the public speaking course which continued in person while the two groups were together in Molfetta.

The in-person training was held over 2 days, as part of Activity C2 of our Erasmus+ project. On the first day we visited Alberobello, a UNESCO World Heritage site (to learn more visit https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/787/ ). We used this cultural visit to work in teams to discuss, explore ideas and gather resources for a public speaking activity we had to present the following day. We were in 4 teams of 7 Maltese and Italian participants for each team.

On the second day of our in-person training in Italy we used the morning to consolidate the preparatory work we did while visiting Alberobello and each team had the time to brainstorm some more to create the 4 presentations for our peers to view, participate in and evaluate.

This section of the website presents all the 4 themes and the presentations given on each one.

The Themes

Each of the 4 teams was assigned a theme at random. Themes were chosen for their relevance to our present society and the world we live in. Below are the 4 themes which were allocated to each team. Each theme is also a hyperlink to more details on how each theme was explored and delivered as a public speaking exercise to the whole group of participants the day after our visit to Alberobello:

(1) Celebrating Gastronomy;

(2) Embracing Diversity;

(3) Respecting the Environment;

(4) Strengthening Peace.

The public speaking task for each team

The task for each team was to create a presentation or a video or a role play of no longer than 10 to 15 minutes using resources, footage and/or ideas sourced during the day in Alberobello. Then the work from each of the 4 teams was presented to the other teams during the afternoon of the second day.

Infact, during Activity C1 in Malta, we had already prepared the groundwork for this task as during a hands-on workshop we created the 4 mind maps for each of the 4 themes using scrap cardboard and pipe cleaners. The teams found these very useful for preparing the groundwork for the 4 public speaking presentations.

The 4 presentations to practice public speaking skills

Each of the 4 teams delivered a public speaking presentation duing the afternoon of the second day of the course. Kenny gave us feedback on each of our presentations highlighting what was interesting and what was innovative together with what could be improved in our presentations. This feedback will enable us to improve our work once we draw on the skills developed during through this training in order to apply them in other contexts such as school, university or work.

Evaluating each other’s work to practice peer-assessment

We also used a rubric as a way to practice peer-assessment in order to evaluate the presentations of the other teams. This helped us discuss in teams, listen to each other’s opinions and reach agreement on scores to give our peers.

The scores that were given were the following: 172 points for Strengthening Peace Team, 164 points for Embracing Diversity Team, 136 points for Respecting the Environment Team and 135 points for Celebrating Gastronomy Team.

The resources for this training

All the resources we used (task sheet and rubrik) are right here for anyone to use should you wish to try out this activity! Any town can be used as a location for the trail. We were lucky to be in Alberobello for this activity! Scroll down to view our resources! 🙂