Ninja Turtle Showdown

This week in speech class we had the most interesting group assignment.  After some brainstorming about topics, Professor Watson had us split into groups of 3 to work on outlining a speech.  I don't know why, but the class (notice that I'm being generic) chose Ninja Turtles out of all the topics that we had come up with.  Go figure.

I know nothing about the Ninja Turtles.  :-)  The first thing that comes to mind when someone says "Ninja Turtles" is the pajamas that Mama would make Juli and I wear if we forgot to make our bed in the morning (they had Ninja Turtles design on the front).  Beyond that, I knew nothing about these cartoon characters: who they were, how many there were, what their mission was, what planet they lived on... nothing!

To make matters even better, neither of my two team members knew much about Ninja Turtles either!  They did know more than I did, which was a good thing.  One of them had watched the movie, though not the cartoon series.

The assignment on Monday was to write out our General Purpose, our Specific Purpose, our Central Idea, and our Main Points.  That was easy enough: you can do all those things without knowing much about your topic.  Professor Watson assigned each group a different style of organization.  We had topical, in which you talk about your main points as sub-points under your topic. 

Wednesday was much more difficult.  We had to write an introduction and conclusion for our "speech" about the Ninja Turtles, because the chapter we were studying covered what is required in those two portions of a speech.  The goal was to draw from the book to get ideas on how to establish your credibility, catch the audience's attention, preview the topic of the speech, etc. for the introduction and then how to close it solidly with the conclusion.  We agonized over those two paragraphs... but finally came up with something at least half-way decent.

But the worst part came last.  Each group had to pick a representative to "present" the speech that they had written.  Obviously, I had no desire to stand up before the class and talk about Ninja Turtles.  The other girl in my group and I managed to get the fellow to present for us, though of course he didn't want to either.  Perhaps it was rude of us... but he did do a fairly good job presenting our speech.

It wasn't so much that I didn't want to talk in front of the class -- I just did not want to talk about Ninja Turtles.  In a couple of weeks, when we give our demonstration speeches, I will not mind at all going in front of the class.  I will be able to talk about something that is much more meaningful to me!

But oh... did some of the other groups come up with some amazing intros and conclusions.  :-)  At least you can't say they didn't use creativity!