English

English

Over the pandemic, our Year 10 class has been working on oral presentations, to increase our understanding of how to construct a persuasive piece that can influence an audience to pick our side. 

The entire cohort was asked to pick an ongoing topic that was relevant since at least September last year, and we were encouraged to pick something that we cared about. We then had to complete a proforma, which was the ‘skeleton’ or basis of our presentation. This included a strong contention, four arguments, a rebuttal (which we then had to disprove or show how our argument was better), a conclusion and persuasive devices for each body paragraph. We undertook some research, then put it all together and made some cue cards to create our oral presentation.

Each presentation was around five minutes long, and we performed them for the class when we came back to school post-remote learning. By the end of the topic, we were able to construct a strong, targeted contention and arguments, use persuasive devices to persuade an audience, research and gather important facts and information, make useful cue cards, and pick up the courage to speak in front of our class.

I’ve never been a huge fan of performing in front of my classmates, but doing this topic, it was actually enjoyable and fun. Some things I enjoyed about this assessment task, was performing in front of our class with a podium (it made it more lifelike and fun) as well as applying my own skills to learn more about a topic that interests me.

Paige Corvell Year 10

I was kind of nervous to talk up the front of the class, but once I got started it just kind of flowed. Using the podium was fun, and it was good we got to choose our topic, as talking about something I cared about was much more fun, and made putting together the presentation interesting.

Maddy Willems Year 10