Our teens program has been around for the past 4 years. Normally, we do the 10-week program, but lately we added the teens debating for the past 1 year.
This time, we decided to change the dynamics a bit for this school holiday program by adding another important element for teens, which was "Interview Skills."
Thus, the idea of this 2-day teens mastery program which consist of our usual teens public speaking, debating ...and interview skills.
This time, we had 16 teens registered, ranging from 12 year old to 16 year old.
We kicked off with the impromptu speech session by Teacher Kim. After going through the module, the participants need to speak up ! "What?" some of them said. "Yes, you have to speak,"answered Kim. It was a nervy start for some of them, but slowly, from observing their friends, soon things went very well.
Then it was followed by session from Teacher Paul on body language, then Teacher Kian on vocal variety.
The new element which was Interview skills was next. We covered the session for the next 30minutes, before the participants had a role-play. It was funny, yet enjoyable session.
Now, this was just not theory base workshop, this was a practical one. Thus,participants were split to 4 groups, each getting their own topic for presentation in front of their parents the next day. Suddenly, they got so excited as they can showcase their ability.
During lunch, they even wasted no time to maximize every minute and discussed their project during lunch.
Debating was next after lunch. Vincent took them on a great journey on how to use critical thinking and creativity when presenting. Then we had a mock-up debate. They were suppose to speak for 3 minutes, but some of them could not even reach to 2 minutes, as this was totally new to most of them. Vincent said ,"This is just the beginning, you will get better as we will have more practice session."
Time flew by so fast, and it was 5.00pm already. It was time to go home.
Day 2, some groups came by super early to get themselves prepared for their presentation. Each group have to present 2 things :-
a) Their group presentation - public speaking
b) They have to battle it out against another team in a debate
You could see the enthusiasm in their eyes as the practised and practised. Some groups focus more on the debate, some groups more on their public speaking presentation.
Parents session.
As parents arrived for the presentation, you could feel the tension in the air. Maybe it was nerve, maybe it was new to some, but the show must go on. Team by team went up to present their group project. They have to even open the floor for Q & A, which parents can ask questions and challenge their ideas. It was really fun. You could see the teens got stuck sometimes as they did not anticipate those questions.
Then it was followed by the debate. The battle of the wits was intense, as each group presented their ideas with confidence, and at the same time, rebutting their opposition ideas. There were lots of cheers from the parents too !
At the end of the day, there were winners for the best presentation and also for the debate. Winning and losing, is just a process. More importantly, the teens learned new things, made new friends and can carry the knowledge they had for the past 2 days into the future.
All the best future leaders. Thank you.
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