Overview
I am a teacher in a vocational-technical school district located in Wilmington, Delaware. The high school in which I work is the largest school out of four in the district. Students select a major to study from the 22 career programs offered. I teach in the Business Technology program for grade levels ten and twelve. The fall enrollment for the 2008-2009 school year consisted of 1,495 students. One percent of the student body was American Indian, 34.2% were African American, 0.7% was Asian American, 16.1% were Hispanic and 48.9% were Caucasian.
Fifty-seven students between the ages of 15 and 18 were enrolled in the Business Technology program during the 2008-2009 school year. Eighty-one percent of them were minority students. Obviously, I teach a diverse group of students: African-American, Caucasian and Hispanic. The majority of my students come from low-to- middle-class environments where both parents are working full-time jobs or where there is only one parent in the home working a full-time job. Due to the working demands and constraints on the parents, most of the students I teach are left at home alone to take care of themselves and their siblings. As a result, important skills such as communications are not a top priority in the home and unfortunately are not developed appropriately. My goal is to assist in this area.
My students are very vocal and are great conversationalists when it comes to communicating with peers. They enjoy engaging in class discussions on various entertainment and current event topics from time to time. Their music of choice is Rhythm and Blues and Rap. Quite often I hear students incorporate beats, rhymes, lyrics or phrases to a song into their conversations with friends. They also use texting language
as well when conversing with friends. For example, a student may use the acronym "OMG" in their conversation, which stands for "Oh My God."
Students appear to be very comfortable when talking with friends or in small groups when in an informal setting, but become extremely uncomfortable when they have to speak publicly in a formal setting. This is because students are engaging in conversation on topics that are familiar and interesting to them. They feel they have something to contribute. It is stress-free and they are able to speak openly. Oral presentations are more formal, structured and are situations of evaluation which is not what most students like and want; so they have a tendency to shy away from it.
Public Speaking is not only an integral part of the Business Technology Curriculum but it is an invaluable personal skill. Students will be using this skill to interview for jobs and communicate with co-workers and clients. This unit is extremely important because it sets a foundation for the future courses my students will be taking over the next three years, all of which require them to give oral presentations. Public Speaking also plays a major role in the Business Professionals of America Organization, an organization geared towards developing leadership abilities and preparation for careers in the business industry. Some of my students are peer leaders and will be asked to make public speeches. Others will compete in events that require them to present orally. This unit is extremely vital to my students' future because without these essential skills they will not be successful in their high school career, the Business Professionals of America Organization and future professional endeavors.
Objectives
My unit will be taught to my tenth grade students during the first quarter. I chose to teach it at that time because it's important that they learn early in the school year the correct way of speaking and presenting to others.
Overall, my focus for this unit is to highlight voice and sound in my students' oratory skills. My goal for this unit is to teach students how to be confident speakers through preparation, practice, memorization, and recitation. In addition, I want to teach students to be creative, interesting, and engaging speakers through the use of poetry elements as well as sensitize them to language in general—its elements and its expressive potential.
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