Knowledge #8 or 9: Preparing & Delivering a Sacrament Meeting Talk

photo askgramps.org

Value: Knowledge

Value Experience: 8 or 9

Goal & Purpose: We wanted our Young Women of all ages to learn to effectively present a talk in Sacrament meeting.

Preparation: 

1. Prepare enough handouts, original can be downloaded here. This is for the girls to take notes during the activity.
2. Print and cut out the Gospel topics (27 total) here.
3. Procure the television and the right cables for you to show video clips.
4. Make sure you can use the chapel for the second half of the activity.
5. Download the videos linked below in the Activity Details if your building's wifi is as unreliable as ours!

Activity Details: 

1. Pass out the handout and pens. Instruct the girls to write down their observations as they watch the video clips.
2. Present the two examples of "bad" public speaking videos found on YouTube, and hosted on my Google Drive here and here. (You can explain that these teenagers are demonstrating "bad" techniques on purpose as part of a school assignment, so you're not making fun of them.) After each clip, ask the girls what they observed, what they wrote down, and have them write down what others say.
3. Present the example of great public speaking found here. (I showed the first 3ish minutes of the talk "Are You the Woman I Think You Are?" by Sheri Dew, November 1997.) You may want  to use something else that's meaningful to you. I chose it because it has personal experiences, vibrant delivery, and prophetic quotations and scriptures interwoven in the text.
4. Ask the girls what they observed, and then talk about other things you like and admire in good talks.
5. Pass out the Gospel topics, and instruct the girls to think of 1-2 sentences about that topic, and to write it on the back of their handout. 
• Example: If the girl chose "The Book of Mormon" she might write: The Book of Mormon is an ancient record translated by Joseph Smith. It contains the stories of the inhabitants of the Americas, including a visitation by the resurrected Jesus Christ.
• The quality of the content isn't terribly important. I wanted the girls to think about the topic and write what they knew about it. If they are struggling, have a leader help, but most of our girls had no trouble and actually wrote some insightful things.
• (Here I also mentioned briefly the sources they would normally use to prepare a talk: scriptures, lds.org, books by Apostles and women church leaders. I told them about my three personal pet peeve NEVERS: Don't say "I have been asked to give a talk on [topic]" and "The dictionary defines [topic] as . . . " and "When the bishop asked me to talk, I was nervous/scared/tried to avoid him." You may have others to add!)
6. Once they've all written something, go to the chapel and have them sit in the first few rows. Have them go up one-by-one and present their sentences, practicing the things we just observed. Some were nervous but in general they did a great job. After each one, I praised what I saw that they did well, and at the end I pointed out a few things we all could work on.

This all fit easily within the hour, and we had 20 girls.

Let me know in the comments if you had success, or what you modified for your ward!