Speech, Debate and Theatre

International Debate Education Association - Shares a variety of teaching resources.

Student Debate Deepens Thinking and Engagement - Offers six techniques to make debates interesting and challenging in the classroom.

Public Speaking: Oracy Skills for the Real World - Use the oracy framework: building physical, cognitive, linguistic, and emotional speaking skills - to help students learn to speak on any topic and to any audience.

National Core Arts Standards Theatre Handbook - Links to the artistic process of Performing Arts and the Anchor Standards (Grades 6-12) that are a natural fit with the application of the Speaking and Listening Standards.

Speaking

Circle of Knowledge - Provides a strategic framework for planning and conducting discussions that foster participation and critical thinking.

Content Area Conversations - Encourage purposeful student talk and learn how to make classroom conversations meaningful.

Gaining Understanding Through Discussion and Debate - Offers classroom activities to develop academic discussion and debate.

Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk - Develop confident students who can articulate their thoughts and learning with strategies like discussion guidelines and roles and structured talk tasks.

Reader’s Theater - Give students a reason to read out loud. See the site offering free scripts.

Strategy Guide: Socratic Seminars - Offers practical methods for applying the approach in the classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.

Using Text-Based Discussions to Understand Informational Texts in Middle School - Read about how to incorporate text-based discussions to help students deeper understandings of complex material.

Effective Student Discussion

Giving Peers Feedback that Matters - Read a blog post that provides scaffolds to encourage effective feedback amongst peers instead of just agreeable talk.

Presentation

Technological Tools for Presentations - Provides a strategy that differentiates instruction by providing opportunities for students to represent their understanding in different forms.

Listening

Active Listening in the Drama Classroom - Provides exercises that apply across all subject areas.

Draft/Multiple Listening Strategy - Improves comprehension by listening and re-listening to a text for multiple purposes.

Thumbs Up! Signals to Encourage Active Listening - Use hand signals to encourage active listening.

Speaking and Listening

Engage NY - Access lesson plans that incorporate the Speaking and Listening Standards.

Nine Great Speaking and Listening Tools - Read a Teaching Channel blog post on how to transform the student experience from passive consumers of information to active creators of content.