Inventing and Presenting Unit 2: Effective Speeches and Building the Invention

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

This lesson is part of a larger interdisciplinary unit combining experimentation and the scientific method, critical thinking, clear writing, and effective speaking. In this lesson, students begin work on inventions of their own design, while also studying effective speeches from history. Students study famous speeches, such as King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” to identify the elements of effective speaking. They also complete the final version of their invention plans and begin work on their inventions, completing weekly progress reports as they work.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Invention Speech Unit: Student Notes: This handout includes questions on topics including  purpose and audience, content and tone, structure, and delivery, designed to help students write an effective speech.

Disclosure Statement: Students can use this form to describe their planned project and notify the teacher of their "intent to invent."

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Young adolescents thrive in active learning situations, and they work best when they are engaged in their topic and are able to connect their learning to their own lives. These connections can more easily be made in interdisciplinary units that accommodate multiple learning styles and multiple ability levels. When students produce something that they value and for which there is a real audience, the learning and assessment are authentic. In their article describing an team-taught interdisciplinary science class that heavily integrated writing, Gardner and Southerland state "One of the most significant means for helping students to see this interconnectedness [among science disciplines], they reported, came from their writing experiences..." As one student in their class noted “Writing helped concretize what I knew." (35) This lesson, part of an interdisciplinary unit integrating language arts and science, provides students with chances to use writing and presenting to "concretize" their scientific thinking.

Further Reading
Gardner, Susan A. and Sherry A. Southerland. "Interdisciplinary Teaching? It Only Takes Talent, Time, and Treasure." English Journal 86.7. (November 2007): 30-36.

National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards: Observe, Interact, Change, Learn. National Academy Press.

National Middle School Association. 1995. This We Believe: Developmentally Responsive Middle Level Schools. Westerville, OH: NMSA.

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