In Speech, I often battle the fear of speaking. It usually comes down to student feeling judged or not good enough. To battle this feeling we do an activity early in the course, like day 2 or 3 when students are still getting to know each other.
I count them off in smaller groups, assign them an area on the white board and sit one person against the board. I instruct the groups to write as many nice things about the person around their head. I snap a picture when the group is finished and we quickly erase. I then make a video of all the images to be watched the day of the first speech. What a relief to see kind and positive things written by classmates.
This has made all the difference in our classroom culture and over all first speech jitters. This is by far one of my favorite activities (Demonstration Speeches with food are a close second.) I also want to highlight 2 very interesting speeches from the first round of "Speech of Introductions." Students seem to find the coolest ways to explain what defines them!
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