The Speech

Do you remember fifth grade? Do you remember the terror of doing an oral presentation? I do! I was in Mrs. Babcock's class and my topic was the Olympic torch relay. My sister Connie had carried the torch leading up to the Calgary 88 Olympics so I had a first hand account. I practiced and practiced and when the day came, I clutched my cue cards tightly as I stood in front of my class and delivered my speech.

Well, Cody is in grade 5 and he is currently working on his oral presentation. They had to choose an interesting person to research and deliver a speech about. He decided to go with his love of cars and chose the president of GM. I was curious - was that the current president? The first president? What was his name and what had he done that was interesting? With a little coaching, Devin persuaded him to change lanes and focus on Elon Musk - the driving force behind the Tesla. (Cody points out a Tesla any time he sees one!)

Initially I thought this assignment would kill us all! The research (50 jot notes required), outline, rough draft, final draft and finally memorizing...it all seemed like too much. Especially for a kid that struggles with literacy. But, you know how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So, we broke down the tasks and got busy. Dynaread got put on hold as we focused on this project and slowly, it started to take shape.

Learning about Elon Musk has been fascinating! What an amazingly brilliant mind. He was reading five hours per day when he was ten years old and taught himself computer programming. He has gone on to develop the company that became PayPal which was bought by Ebay and then used that money to fund SpaceX. He is using abstract and interesting methods to make fiction reality in so many areas - space travel, internet satellites, transportation tubes and so much more than can fit into a grade 5 speech. Also, an interesting fact I learned is that he inspired the Robert Downey Jr. character for Iron Man. Cool!

Cody has embraced this project and has exceeded my expectations! Once we had a final draft ready, I had him read it from the paper 3 or 4 times per day. I told him this would help familiarize him with the words and help him get quicker. My sneaky ulterior motive was that it would help him memorize it without realizing it. And, guess what? It worked! On Sunday night I asked him to say as much as he could without the paper and he made it through with only a few prompts. We were both really excited :) I hope that when he delivers the speech in front of his class, he's not too nervous to include all the great expression that he uses when he does it at home.

We have survived the speech of grade five. Surely, we can take on anything now.