A Good Lesson
While at Zachary’s School (Elementary Grades 1-5) a few days ago, I noticed the following poster on the wall.
If you can’t read the words, it says,
Write a Satisfying Paragraph
- Start with a topic sentence that
covers all you want to say. - Give the reader three juicy details.
One. Two. Three. - End with a filling conclusion.
I was impressed with the above poster and hope they are using it to teach young students how to write effectively. Also hoping this will be carried over into oral communication.
Tips for public speaking have been around for ages. It’s a shame people don’t apply some of these tips when they make a speech or short talk. Here’s a couple I heard some years ago:
Tip One
- Tell them what you are going to tell them.
- Tell them.
- Tell them what you told them.
Tip Two
- Have a good beginning.
- Have a good ending.
- Keep the beginning and ending close together.
The key elements often are to not ramble and to be brief. We all like for the speaker to get to the point and be brief. That’s good advice for all of us when we are trying to get a point across.
We could apply that elementary school poster to most of our communication these days.
Communication is not a one way street. True communication occurs when the person receiving the message understands the exact information/idea that the speaker intended to transmit.
That my friend, is a difficult task.
~Aesop
Joke of the Day
A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookie wafting up the stairs.
He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands. With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. There, spread out on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table. The aged and withered hand, shaking, made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when he was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife.
"Stay out of those," she said. "They're for the funeral.”
1 comment:
Great advice on "Speaking" Jim but I just wanted to add that my wife adds one more item to the list: She says what she is going to tell me, she tells me, she tells me what she just told me & then she ASKS ME WHAT SHE JUST SAID! Most of the time I can't remember.
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