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Public speaking activities & games
A directory to write-out-loud's 44+ activities and games
By: Susan Dugdale
Here's a quick-link directory to all the 44+ public speaking activities and games on my site.
For example, articulation games based on tongue twisters and lots of impromptu speaking activities, like one- minute speeches, expert interviews, 'for and against' debates or ones using picture prompts and random noises (?!).
There are deliciously good poems to play with too.
And many of these pages come with useful freebie printables.
You'll find the activities ultra-flexible - adapting equally well across age groups from middle school aged students to adults.
Use them and your students will develop fluency, flexibility, creativity, audience awareness, delivery skills and confidence. And most important of all they'll lose self-limiting anxiety and, have FUN!
Here's to fear-free happy (and heroic) public speakers,
Susan
PS. I have an ebook of public speaking games - a compilation of those you'll find scattered throughout my site. It's a one-stop ever-green resource - ideal for teachers.
And there's a bundle of 17 fun effective impromptu speaking activities with guidelines and printables too.
7 tongue twister games
This is a collection of speech games based around tongue twisters that I put together especially for those who were, because of the covid pandemic, at-home with their children and having to devise teaching programs.
The games are fun whatever the location, easily played and suitable for kids from little to large, including adults.
Turn them into challenges! Video them. Send them to your family and ask them better them! Get everyone involved. You'll improve your fluency and articulation while having a much-needed laugh.
I've included full instructions and a printable of 44 tongue twisters and poems to download.
Picture prompts for impromptu speaking
Have you ever used picture prompts as starters for impromptu speeches?
No? Then you'll be delighted to discover just how effective using an image can be.
Here are 5 activities based around using images as their starting point. They range from simple shared conversations to more challenging activities and are most suited to middle school and up.
There is a printable of 40 quality picture prompts to download enabling you to get started straightaway.
41 Tell-this-story picture prompts
My first printable file of picture prompts for impromptu speaking has been so very popular I decided to put together another collection of them.
These also come with activity suggestions for paired as well as group storytelling, and two more printables (story starters and story additions) to use along with the images.
Go to tell-this-story picture prompts to get both the images and the activity ideas for impromptu speaking practice.
Ooooh! Halloween speech topics and activities
This is a collection of four fun, skill and confidence building solo, paired, and group Halloween-themed activities, with numerous variations, for middle school upward.
Each activity comes with instructions and free printables: 50 Halloween speech topics for impromptu speeches, a feedback form for students to use, 48 Halloween story starters, 40 Halloween picture prompts...and more.
Go to Halloween speech topics and activities.
10 superb activities for public speaking
This is my most popular page of public speaking activities. It's been shared literally thousands of times - 15 thousand and, then some!
Interviewing a red cabbage
I know the photo of a red cabbage with a speech balloon overlay is quirky but there you go, that's my sense of humor! -:)
The activity it illustrates is a paired one - interviews. In this instance a cabbage is being quizzed about color discrimination.
Why limit interviewing to people? I've met some delightfully eloquent cabbages, a couple of quarrelsome chairs, a vain mirror...
Encouraging, nurturing and expanding a person's imagination will help them learn to become more flexible in their thinking and more fluent in expressing their ideas.
Talking to vegetables and household objects might seem nonsensical, however it's confidence building!
Along with the Interview activity, you'll find three variations of One minute speeches (superb for teaching impromptu speaking painlessly), plus six more improv games. All of them are suitable for middle school students and beyond.
The page also has teaching guidelines and suggestions to help introduce and use the games effectively.
6 fabulous poems for kids of all ages to play with
On the Ning Nong Nang, where the cows go Bong, and the monkeys all say BOO ...
Yes, that's the beginning of English poet and comedian Spike Milligan's famous and much-loved poem featuring a collection of animals, trees, and a teapot or two, who make extraordinary noises.
Look and you'll also find two of Shel Silverstein's: Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too and Whatif, Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat, Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, AA Milne's Sneezles, plus one more for good measure, Dr Suess's About Socks.
The page has suggestions for hours and hours of happy creative fun for everyone. There's audio and a freebie printable of all the poems too.
7 public speaking games
Oink, Connect the dots, Story starters, End lines, The BIG fat lie, plus two more games. There's loads of public speaking fun here!
This is another page that has been shared thousands of times. The skills focused on in this group of games are: content structure, transitions, fluency, body language, and flexibility.
They adapt just as easily as those on the page above and are equally good in schools or community groups.
Go on. Find out about Oink! It's guaranteed to get folk laughing. Go to: 7 public speaking games
5 fun speech exercises
This collection of 5 public speaking exercises contains a useful icebreaker (Interview introductions), and a great preparatory activity to lead into persuasive speaking or debating - For/Against.
There's also one of my personal favorites for choral group work, Conducted Speech which uses tongue twisters (excellent for articulation practice), and there's two more.
Again, the exercises are adaptable across age groups.
Improv games - 5 warm-ups & icebreakers
These activities borrow from drama. I've included them because a good public speaker needs what they offer: an awareness of body language and non-verbal communication. They'll help develop concentration, mental agility and flexibility, confidence and empathy.
And of course, they're fun!
Two of them, (Hares & hounds, and Murder), are excellent as either icebreakers or warm-ups.
Do have a look:5 improv games
(Warning - you'll need a fairly large clear space to play them well and the first two activities are gloriously noisy.)
Building self-confidence in a child
This page of activities is largely concerned with encouraging and developing a positive sense of self in a child through speech and drama exercises. It's an area I am passionate about and the page grew larger accordingly!
There are 36 activities ranging in appropriateness for children of kindergarten age and upward.
And last, but definitely not least there's my ...
Public speaking games ebook
This is a popular practical compilation of all the public speaking games and activities found on my freebie pages above.
The ebook comes with full instructions for each game, plus their variations AND the resources needed, (if they're printable), to play them.
Find out more >>>
Or if you're not ready to purchase an ebook of 28+ games, try one of these
3 public speaking games
One minute speeches and its variations, Permission to present badly - a gem for teaching presentation skills, and Tangling tongue twisters - activities for crisp clear speech, are available singly.
You get all the instructions and resources you need to introduce and play the game (plus its extensions) effectively for $5.95.
From fear to fun in 28 ways
A complete one stop resource to scuttle fear in the best of all possible ways - with laughter.
