Musical Audiences

Context: This activity is for a language arts classroom preceding a speaking or writing assignment.

Learning Goals: Following the activity, students should:

Recognize that they are writing/speaking for an audience.
Recognizes that the audience's attitudes influence rhetorical elements such as the subject, the tone, and the purpose for their writing/speaking.
Write a short paragraph to reflect on their understanding of audience.

Materials:

Timer, music (if you want to actually play musical chairs to select the speaker)

Preparation:

Prepare list of topics and audiences.

Activity:

Like musical chairs, musical audiences has the "odd person out." When I do this in class, I have students work in groups (4-5 per group works best) with one seat less than there are group members, so that one has to stand (and be "it"—the speaker). If you want to determine who speaks by playing musical chairs, it's all the more fun. Here's how it works. The teacher will give the "it" students a topic and an audience. "It" will then have one minute to speak to this audience on this topic, tailoring his or her speech to the audience's concerns. After one minute, the teacher will change the audience, but not the topic or the speaker. Students will then have another minute to speak, changing the discourse to again reflect the audience and its potential reaction. Then switch both speakers and audience again, etc. More detailed instructions are below, but here are the topics and audiences I've used with success in the past. Mix and match as it seems appropriate to you.

Topics                                               Audiences
Drugs (illegal or prescription)             Senior citizens
Music Censorship                              Inner City Youth
Broccoli Casserole                            Kindergarten students
TV show "warning labels"                  Body Builders
                                                         Reps of the American Beef Council
                                                         Music industry executives
                                                         Rap artists
                                                         Members of a drug rehab therapy group

So, for the first round:
Student 1 will speak about drugs (topic 1) to a group of senior citizens for one minute. Student 1 will then speak about topic 1 to a group of inner city youth for one minute.

Round Two:
Student 2 will speak about topic 1 to kindergarten students for one minute. Student 2 will then speak about topic 1 to members of a drug rehab group.

Round Three:
Student 3, topic 2, and two new audiences, etc, until everyone has had a chance to address the group using at least two audiences.

I have found that we have a lot of fun with the broccoli casserole topic.

Afterward:
Students should have some time to write a reflection about how their discourse changed as a result of the changing audience and its attitudes about their subject. Discuss it as a class. This will give the students a chance to analyze through the comparison of their two situations that their approach to persuading an audience will change depending on the audience's receptivity to and attitude towards their subject matter.

Evaluation:
Collect the reflection or include in the portfolio. The real evaluation will occur as they continue to write and reflect how audience influences their rhetorical strategies throughout the class.