Lesson video

Hi, everyone, and welcome to our lesson.

Today our lesson's going to be a little bit different where our focus is going to be mainly on speaking and listening.

We're going to be learning and reciting some of "The Highwayman" poem.

In our lesson today, you will be able to recite "The Highwayman" and memorise one stanza.

Here are some key words we're going to be using.

Recite, projection, diction, body language, pace.

Well done.

To recite means to read aloud a text from memory in front of an audience.

Projection is using our voice to speak powerfully and clearly.

Diction involves pronouncing words clearly.

Body language refers to how we use our posture and gestures to communicate meaning and feelings.

Pace refers to the speed at which we speak.

Today we're going to be learning and reciting stanzas one to three of "The Highwayman." We're gonna start with learning how to recite stanzas one to three.

Then, we're going to focus on learning one stanza off by heart.

To recite means to read aloud a text from memory in front of an audience.

Reciting can be an important final stage of the writing process.

Reciting involves speaking in front of others and listening to others.

So in our lesson today, you're going to get to practise your recital skills, but also practise your skills as being a good member of an audience and listening to other people as well.

When reciting, we need to think about all of these things.

Projection, diction, body language, pace.

We're gonna focus on projection to start with.

Projecting our voice involves speaking powerfully and clearly.

Projection is very important because our audience needs to be able to hear what we are saying.

When projecting our voices, we need to use deep breaths in and use the muscles in our stomachs to help us speak.

This muscle is called the diaphragm.

This helps us project that means to send our voice out around the room and speak at an appropriate volume, so everyone in the audience can hear us.

Projecting our voice is not the same as shouting.

So projecting is speaking at an appropriate volume, so that everyone in the room can hear you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to shout.

And again, if we're using the stomach muscles and our breath to properly power our voices.

It won't be shouting.

It'll be strong, strong speaking coming from our stomach instead.

Projecting involves which of these? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done, if you spotted that projecting involves using the stomach muscles when speaking and taking deep breaths before speaking.

When reciting, we need to think about all of these.

So we've got projection, diction, body language, and pace.

We've already talked about projection.

Now let's focus on diction.

Diction involves pronouncing words clearly.

Diction is very important because our audience needs to be able to understand what we are saying.

So projection helps us speak at the appropriate volume.

But when we think about diction, we're thinking more about making sure we're pronouncing the words clearly and correctly, so that the audience actually understands the words.

When speaking with clear diction, we need to take our time to pronounce our words carefully.

This might involve practising saying some tricky vocabulary, so we can pronounce it clearly in our recital.

So it's often much more helpful to get used to practising saying the same tricky words over and over and over again, so that then when it comes to your actual recital, you feel comfortable with saying them and you're not gonna trip over or mispronounce your words.

Speaking with clear diction is important because, pause the video while you decide.

It helps the audience understand the words we are saying, it helps us slow down and pronounce tricky words correctly, and it helps us to keep the audience engaged in our presentation.

Well done if you spotted that actually all three of these are elements of diction and why it's so important, 'cause our audience isn't gonna be very interested in hearing what we're saying if they can't understand the words.

So it's really important that they can understand everything we're saying clearly.

When we're siting, we need to think about all these.

So now we've talked about projection and diction.

Now we're going to focus on body language.

Body language refers to how we use our posture and gestures to communicate meaning and feelings.

Now let's just think about the word posture.

Posture means how we stand or sit, how we hold our bodies.

And gestures, we might think quite a lot about like gesturing with our hands or our bodies.

Okay, so how are we using our bodies to help us with our recital.

Body language is very important, because it helps us look confident.

Now, some people might find standing up and reciting in front of an audience a bit nerve wracking, and actually that's completely normal.

Public speaking is a different type of skill that might cause some people to feel a little bit worried and a little bit nervous.

But one really, really good tip is if you adopt a strong body language, so you think about how you're standing, you standing tall, proud as if you are confident, even if you don't actually feel confident, it can really, really help you actually to feel more confident.

You can almost trick your mind into feeling more confident than it is if you act like you're more confident with your body language.

Strong body language includes all of these things.

So standing with our feet shoulder widths apart, speaking with our chin up, and it's important to do this because it's really, really easy to look down at the ground if we're feeling a bit nervous, and then suddenly our voice is being sent down to the floor and it's not being sent around the room for people to be able to hear us properly.

So if we speak with our chin up, it's gonna help us speak loudly and clearly, so everyone can hear us and it makes us look confident.

Also standing with our shoulders back.

So if we're standing with a very diminutive body language so our shoulders are slumped, we might be picking up our fingernails, we might be all hunched over.

It's gonna be hard to get enough breath into our lungs to actually be able to use our diaphragm to send our voices and project our voices around.

And it's going to then make us feel a little bit short of breath and like we can't get our words out and make us again feel more nervous.

If we stand strong stance with our feet shoulder width apart, chin up, shoulders back, it helps us get all the air into our lungs that we need to help us speak loudly enough and clearly enough.

Strong body language includes which of these? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that strong body language involves speaking with our chin up, standing with our feet shoulder width apart, and standing with our shoulders back.

And now C was a bit of a trick one there because speaking in a loud clear voice is very, very important.

But that's more to do with projection than body language.

When we're reciting, we need to think about projection, diction, body language, and pace.

Pace refers to the speed at which we speak.

If we speak too quickly, our audience may not be able to clearly hear what we're saying.

If we speak too slowly, our audience may lose interest in what we are saying.

Successful presenter speak at a slow clear pace so everyone can hear them.

So we've got to make sure that we aren't rushing our words out.

It's much more likely that we're going to speak far too fast than speak too slowly.

Speaking at the correct pace will give us more time to project our voices, speak with clear diction and make eye contact with members of the audience.

So if we get the pace right, it's much easier to think about the other things that we want to do to make our recital as effective as possible.

Now it's time for your task.

Match the key aspects of successful reciting to their definitions.

Pause the video while you do that.

Well done if you spotted that projection involves speaking powerfully, clearly, and an appropriate volume.

Diction means pronouncing all our words correctly and clearly.

Body language is our posture, stance and gestures which help us convey meaning and emotions.

And pace is the speed at which we speak.

Now it's time for the second part of your task.

Now you are going to read through stances one to three of "The Highwayman" using the recital skills we have been learning about.

You do not need to memorise any of the stanzas just yet, so you can have them in front of you to read them out loud.

By this stage in our writing, we've read the stanzas so many times you might actually be able to recite them from memory.

I feel like I can at this stage.

But don't worry about doing that.

If you can't remember, you can have them in front of you.

This is more an opportunity for you to practise all the recital skills.

So thinking about your projection, your diction, your body language, and your pace.

Not worrying about memorising any of the words just yet, but just getting a bit of a practise of saying these.

Let's read through these stanzas together.

Thinking about all of those recital skills.

"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding.

Riding, riding, The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle.

His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, His pistol butts a-twinkle, His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed In the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there, But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Now pause the video while you read through the stanzas one to three of "The Highwayman" again, this time really focusing on using the reciting skills that we have been learning about.

Great work everyone.

So, and hopefully now we've had a chance to practise our recital skills reading through those stanzas.

When you were reciting the stanzas, did you remember to use these skills? Did you think about projecting your voice, speaking with clear diction, making sure you're using strong body language and speaking at a clear pace, so everyone could hear you and you weren't rushing? Well done.

Now we're going to move on to the second part of our lesson where now we're going to focus on learning one stanza off by heart.

Now you're going to choose which stanza you would like to learn off by heart.

You might have a particular favourite stanza out of stanzas one, two, or three that you would like to memorise.

This means that you would be able to recite the stanza from memory without reading the words from a page.

Learning a text by heart means that then you can focus more on the other skills like projection, diction, body language, and peace.

So we've just practised all those recital skills without having the added focus on memorising a stanza.

But now we're gonna switch our focus.

You don't need to memorise all three.

Just choose one.

Choose one that's maybe your favourite or one that you think is gonna be the easiest for you to remember and focus on learning the words off by heart.

Then when you've done that, you're going to have it locked in your head.

So you don't need to think about reading it off a page.

And then you can dedicate your energy to really reciting this stanza with all those recital skills to really bring it to life.

True or false: learning part of a text by heart enhances our recital skills.

Pause the video while you decide.

Well done.

If you spotted that this is true.

Now read through the two potential justifications and pause the video while you decide which one is correct.

Great work if you spotted that B was the correct justification.

Learning a text by heart means that you can focus more on the other skills such as projection, diction, body language, and pace.

Can you think of any strategies we could use to help us memorise one stanza? So have you ever had to learn lines off by heart before in a different context or maybe trying to memorise a particular spelling that you find really tricky, or if you have had to learn the words of a song, for example, or in a play or a show, can you think back to a time when you've had to memorise something and any strategies that you've used that are you find really helpful? Take a moment to have a little think and if you've got a partner, you can share your ideas with them.

Well done, everyone.

You've probably come up with loads of ideas.

Here are some of my ideas.

I always find it really helpful to write the words down if I need to memorise something.

So you might find that writing the stanza out helps.

In the same way, sometimes if we're learning spellings, we might look at the spelling, cover it up, write it down and check it.

You might want to look at a line at a time, cover it up, say it out loud, and then check whether you got it right or you get a partner to help you where they might be able to see your stanza written down and line by line you have a quick look at it and then they cover it up and you say it and they check whether you've got it right.

Also, something I love to do if I am trying to learn the words of a poem or a song or something like that, is to make actions up for the keywords in each line of the stanza.

And it's really important that you come up with your own actions 'cause they're gonna stick in your head much better.

But if you decide on some actions that help, remember the story.

So for example, he'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead.

That might be an action that you might want to use if you were memorising stanza two.

You don't need an action for every word 'cause otherwise it gets far too confusing and you're thinking too much about the actions.

But maybe one or two key actions for every line can really help you.

Other things such as highlighting tricky words that you keep on forgetting if you write it down, are also good strategies.

Now, it is time for your task.

You're going to decide whether you want to memorise stanzas one or two or three.

Then use the strategies to help you memorise the full stanza.

So here are some that we just talked about, but you might have some others.

So writing the stanza down, look, cover, say, check, and making up actions for keywords in each line of the stanza.

Those are a few suggestions, but if you've got other ways to help you memorise it, use those as well.

Pause the video while you complete your task.

Well done, everyone.

So hopefully now we've all had a chance to spend some time memorising a stanza of our choice.

Did you use the strategies to help you memorise the words? So did you find writing the stanza down helpful? Did you use look, cover, say, or check? Did you make up some actions for key words in each line of the stanza, or did you use another strategy? Well done and I hope you enjoyed that challenge.

Now that you've memorised the words, it's time to recite your standard using the recital skills.

So we've gotta make sure we've memorised the words clearly first, and now we're gonna apply our recital skills, so thinking about projection, diction, body language, and pace.

Pause the video while you complete your task.

Well done, everyone.

Did you remember to use all of the recital skills? So did you project your voice? Did you speak with clear diction? Did you use strong body language and speak at a clear pace so everyone could hear you? If you did, well done.

Okay, everyone, well done.

And that now brings us to the end of our lesson.

Today we've been learning and reciting stanzas one to three of "The Highwayman." Reciting a text aloud is an important skill.

When reciting a text, speakers should consider how to engage their audience through their diction, projection, body language, and pace.

We can use a range of strategies to support us with learning a text by heart.

I hope you enjoyed our lesson today, and having this opportunity to learn by heart one of the stands of your choice, has really helped you bring the end of our unit to life.