Practice public speaking - You teach, I deliver

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short.

Planning and setting up this activity

• Make sure everyone has a way to make notes.
• To give everyone lots of time, you could run this activity over a few weeks. You could also ask people before the session to think about their favourite things, so they can bring in any relevant items, such as sports equipment or their favourite book.
• You may wish to practice deep breathing or other techniques to help everyone to manage any nerves, such as mindfulness techniques. Some people may also find it more comfortable to talk as part of a circle, rather than standing or sitting at the front of the group.

Running this activity

1. Gather everyone together and explain that you’re all going to pair up with someone you may not know as well. You’re then going learn about each other, before sharing what you’ve learned about your partner with everyone else. 
2. Ask everyone to pair up with someone they don’t know so well or someone they want to learn more about. You may also wish to randomly assign partners before the session.
3. In pairs, people should get together and take time to tell each other as much as possible about themselves. People should make sure to make careful notes and ask questions. People could talk about a Scout badge, the people they live with, their friends, their favourite book or film, sports they like or a hobby they do. Remind everyone to ask your partner for clarity if you don’t understand something.
4. After a short chat, everyone should put together a short presentation of everything they’ve learned about their partner. They may want to use props, share three facts, pictures or drawings. They could do a speech, make some artwork to show everyone, tell a story or do something creative. The presentation only needs to be one or two minutes.
5. When everyone’s ready, each person should tell the group about their partner, and you could do this in two ways:
   
   
   • People could do their presentation individually, without saying their partner’s name. At the end, everyone should see if they can remember who the person’s partner was, based on what they’ve learned.
   • Pairs could present together, sharing what they’ve learned about each other. They may wish to work together to practice the presentation if doing it this way.
     
     
6. After each presentation, you could give the audience some time to ask some questions or share what they enjoyed about the presentation.
7. Remember, no-one should be made to present to others if they don’t feel happy or comfortable to. Instead, find an alternative way for them to present. Someone else could read out what they’ve written, they may want to pre-record a video or voice note at home to play back to the group, or they may want to answer yes or no questions about the badge by shaking or nodding their head.