Galatic Activity 28

Reading a piece that has been prepared or written by another person. It could be legislation, technical, personal or instructional.

Activity 28 – Reading

Duration: 3 – 5 mins
Applicable Streams: Personal challenge, Leadership, Learning & Development, Workplace skills, Inspiration/Motivation, Humour, Conference/events, Education,

Aim

In this activity you are aiming to:

Deliver a reading out loud to alive audience, brilliantly

Objectives

To do this, you will need to keep the following objectives in mind:

Choose a reading that is appropriate for your context.
Explore the intent of the reading, and use appropriate tone, pace and volume to suit the intent.
Deliver the reading in a way that suits the purpose – to entertain, inform, or persuade.

The Why…

Reading out loud? Yes! It’s an important skill that we may learn when we’re in Primary School, but we continue to need throughout our lives. Consider the following scenarios:

Needing to read out by-laws in a community meeting
Announcing a change in direction from Head Office – by way of company announcement in a board meeting
Reading someone else’s speech who is absent from a meeting and cannot deliver it themselves
Reading lines from a play for a theatre production (practising with other actors)
Doing a ‘reading’ at a funeral, wedding or religious service.

The aim here is to read material that you might have to realistically deliver in your workplace or community.

Where do I start?

As per the HOW TO instructions above, brainstorm your current work, community and home life and consider in what situations you may need to read out loud – then find a piece of writing that would suit that purpose. If you’re stuck for ideas, have a chat to your Program Director.

The How

Specific guidelines on how to tackle this activity.

Choose a reading that is appropriate for your context

there’s no point practising reading from a genre that you’re likely to never read in public so brainstorm your current work, community and home life and consider in what situations you may need to read out loud – then find a piece of writing that would suit that purpose.

Explore the intent of the reading, and use appropriate tone, pace and volume to suit the intent

Consider whether the tone should be lighthearted, serious or neutral. If the content is complex or difficult to understand, consider slowing down the pace. If there are stages in the writing where lowering or raising your volume would add to the impact of what you’re saying, play around with how loud you’re reading.

Deliver the reading in a way that suits the purpose - to entertain, inform, or persuade

Some texts are literally just meant to inform the audience so there’s no need to make it lighthearted or change the volume for impact. Consider how best to deliver the piece that you’re reading out loud and try a few different approaches when you’re practising until you find the right combination of delivery strategies.

Variations:

If you’re stuck for ideas, consider:

Poetry,
Famous speeches, Eulogy,
Political, Environmental, Activist
Play, Script
Boss’ or employers policy statement
Children’s story

Tips and traps

TRAPS:

Choosing a piece that is too long or short for the time allocated.
Choosing a piece that has many words that you find difficult to pronounce or enunciate correctly, and not practising enough before presenting this activity to the club.

TIPS:

Normal reading speed is about 150 words per minute so check with your Program Director if the piece you’re keen on doing doesn’t fit within the prescribed time limits.
Practise practise practise! You are reading, not memorising the piece, but the more practised you are, the easier it will be to deliver so make a point of practising as much as possible before you deliver to the club – especially if there are difficult concepts or words that are hard to pronounce.