Try it! Speech I: Public Speaking and Practical Life Skills!
Speech I: Public Speaking and
Practical Life Skills
Everyone is going to have to do public speaking someday. Your homeschool high schoolers cannot escape. They’ll go to college and give presentations in class, they’ll teach Sunday school, they’ll give announcements at meetings… SOMETHING will happen!
But what if your teens aren’t afraid of public speaking? What if they have learned skills and confidence in speaking in front of others? What if they had FUN while learning SPEECH??
Many years ago, we started working with our homeschool high schoolers to give them public speaking skills. We started a speech and debate team that is still ongoing in our local support group. My kids have told me that it was the most important class they took in high school.
They’ve used their skills in college presentations and in spontaneous things that have come up (like a professor asking my daughter to come with her to speak to the Board about the benefits of keeping the photography program).
They’ve also used their skills in high school by participating in local ACSI Regional Speech Meets, American Legion Speech Events (for scholarships), Shakespeare monologue contests with the English Speaking Union, and more! (These are all POWERFUL transcript builders.)
So, by request, we released our curriculum! Speech I: Public Speaking and Practical Life Skills. $14.99 in our ebookstore gets you a full YEAR of Speech curriculum and lots of material for making happy memories!
This 30-week curriculum has 15 lessons. Each lesson has a section for research, for warming up, for practicing independently and with a partner, instructions for presenting, evaluation forms (for students and parents) and a fun “take-away” idea. The friendly style of instruction includes paragraphs aimed at the students themselves and lesson-by-lesson information for the parents to make facilitating the group easy.
Some topics are an all-in-one-session format; some spread over two weeks, and some topics with more complex content come in this format:
- First week: Have fun experiences with the topic being presented, a teaching from the textbook, individual or group practice
- Second week: Practice what you learned, develop material or memorize as needed
- Third week: Present and the next lesson
- (The format, of course, is adaptable to group needs- can be easily spread out over more weeks or contracted into fewer.)
We’ve learned over time that we can’t just throw homeschool high schoolers into composing and presenting speeches. They will NEVER learn to love public speaking that way!

Instead, we ease them into public speaking with non-threatening, familiar, low-preparation-energy experiences and build up to speech writing. We also throw in practical, use-it-in-life material like interview skills and Bible lesson presentations.
The format includes fun and laughter (which makes any kind of learning better.)
Here are the lesson topics in Speech I: Public Speaking and Practical Life Skills.
- Lesson 1: Presenting Kid Lit (Interpretation of Children’s Literature)
- Lesson 2: Presenting a Bible Reading
- Lesson 3: Presenting Spoken-Word Poetry
- Lesson 4: Presenting a Humorous Monologue
- Lesson 5: Organizing & Writing a “Visual Aid How-to” Speech (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 6: Gathering Materials & Practicing a “Visual Aid How-to” Speech (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 7: Presenting a “Visual Aid How-To” Speech (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 8: Organizing & Researching a Biographical Report (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 9: Writing & Practicing a Biographical Report (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 10: Presenting a Biographical Report (Expository Speech)
- Lesson 11: Creating & Presenting an Elevator Pitch
- Lesson 12: Creating & Presenting a Sales Pitch
- Lesson 13: Presenting an Infomercial (Group Project)
- Lesson 14: Practicing Beginning Interview Skills
- Lesson 15: Presenting a Children’s Bible Lesson
We are planning to release Speech II, III, IV so that homeschool high schoolers can hone their skills each year!
Download your copy today for $14.99!
Hi,
None of the links to buy the ebook are working for me
Christina, Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
Here are links to the curriculum (teacher’s edition): https://7sistershomeschool.com/product/speech-i-public-speaking-and-practical-life-skills/
Student workbook: https://7sistershomeschool.com/product/speech-student-workbook/
Is there an assessment tool included in your curriculum for Speech 1, whether it’s a rubric to grade by or test of some sort? Thank you!
Hi Christine! There are Evaluation Sheets included in the Teacher’s Guide to help you give your students specific feedback. These can also be used to determine a grade if you are offering the class with grading.
Approximately how many pages are the student speech and the teacher’s guides? Thanks
Hi Tarra! The Teacher’s Guide is 86 pages and the Student Workbook is 66.
Please how can I get practical materials from you to build my high school children on public speaking? Thanks
Here are links to our Public Speaking course.
This is the Teacher’s Guide with lots of step by step instructions for activities:
https://7sistershomeschool.com/product/speech-i-public-speaking-and-practical-life-skills/
Here is the student guide:
https://7sistershomeschool.com/product/speech-student-workbook/
Is there a way to order workbooks for students or is it just a Downloaded pdf file to print after purchase?
Hi Jennifer, Good question! All 7Sisters materials are downloadable pdfs.