You already perform every week: explaining a late bus to a teacher, calming a younger sibling, answering a question when the room goes quiet. Today you plan and deliver a brief performance of your own, thirty seconds to three minutes, for a real audience in this room or on a short recording.
By the end you will have one performance plan in your Communication Portfolio and proof that you delivered it: the studio transcript, or a partner's name and the date.
Before anyone speaks, you make three decisions. Form: what kind of piece it is, such as a monologue (one speaker, no replies), a role play, a radio play, a mime, a puppet show or a voiced animation. Audience: who is watching or listening. Stakes: what the speaker stands to lose or gain. Without stakes, it is only reading aloud.
Model monologue: The Last Bus (about 60 seconds, written for this lesson)
AOIFE (at a bus stop, bag at her feet): It's twenty past. The last bus is at half past. If I miss it, I'm walking six kilometres in the rain with a broken umbrella and a bag that smells of wet PE gear.
Mam said not to stay for the extra practice. I stayed. If I don't stay, I'm the one who quits, and I've already quit three things this year.
So here's the deal. I get on this bus. I go home. And tomorrow I tell Coach I'm staying for the full season. Not because I'm brilliant. Because I said I would.
(The bus appears. She lifts her bag.) That's it. That's the whole speech. Nobody else needed to hear it. But I did.
Write your own outline in Enter Your Work under this step. Keep it to between thirty seconds and three minutes of speaking; most pieces land around a minute.
Need a spark? Pick a real moment where something was on the line, for example:
You can speak as yourself or as a character. A monologue can be recorded in the studio in the next step. Any other form, or any piece with more than one performer, is performed live to a partner: put each speaker's name before their lines.
This is the piece for your Communication Portfolio. Work in this order:
The studio does not keep the audio. If it shows a transcript, copy that in as your proof. For live delivery, add a line like Sign-off: Cara N., 12 March.
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