Text Production Oral Presentation Spoken Word Performance Text Production Oral Purpose To provide you with the opportunity to: Demonstrate and understanding of the interplay between what authors present in texts and the experiences, ideas, values, and beliefs of readers. Demonstrate and use language skills and techniques to create personal, persuasive texts that address the meaning and intention of the task. Description of assessment The aim the task is to convey your thoughts on a topic of particular personal interest; this can be a small or large topic. Words and stories have the power to effect people and in a spoken word piece the speaker is emotionally involved with their material and as a result their piece is presented in a very personal and powerful way. Persuasive language aims to manipulate the audience into accepting a particular point of view or prompt them to react in a particular way; the approach to the subject is often subjective. Create and present a Spoken Word Performance on a topic negotiated with me. A key part of this piece will be how you present – the way you use your voice as a tool. You may support your oral with a multimedia presentation if you wish; this could be PowerPoint, video, www.voicethread.com or some other form. Assessment conditions An oral presentation up to a maximum of 6 minutes. Please hand up a recording (audio or video), transcript of your presentation and the PowerPoint thumbnails/Voicethread etc link if used. Some guidelines Begin with an opening/introduction which grabs the reader, sets the tone, or strongly conveys your point of view. Make use of voice, tone, pausing, pacing, emphasis, volume and expression to enhance the meaning of your oral. Present a clear line of discussion and build to a strong conclusion. Use a range of language/literary devices to enhance your piece and convey your ideas – like simile, metaphor, repetition etc. Use examples/anecdotes appropriately to support your claims. Demonstrate your personal engagement with the topic. Engage (and maybe inspire) the audience. Assessment Design Criteria Knowledge and Understanding KU1 Knowledge and understanding of authors’ use of stylistic features and language techniques to communicate ideas and influence the reader’s response. KU2 Knowledge and understanding of ideas, values, and beliefs in texts. KU3 Knowledge and understanding of the textual conventions of different text types. Analysis An1 Analysis of the interplay between what authors present in texts and the experiences, ideas, values, and beliefs of readers. An2 Analysis of the similarities and differences in texts, in comparative exercises. An3 Analysis of the ways in which language techniques are used to influence opinions and decisions in texts. Application Ap1 Use of language skills and techniques to create coherent texts that address the meaning and intention of the task. Ap2 Recognition of connections between texts, and an integrated approach to comparing and contrasting texts. Ap3 Use of evidence from texts to develop and support a response. Ap4 Use of textual, structural, and conventional features of selected text types and forms of presentation to convey meaning. Communication C1 Accuracy, clarity, and fluency of expression. C2 Appropriate form and register for audience and purpose. Marking Sheet – Oral Spoken Word Performance Criteria Indicators/abilities Comments KU2 Knowledge and Shows knowledge and understanding of understanding of ideas, the ideas, values, and beliefs in familiar values, and beliefs in texts. and unfamiliar texts. These texts may be by others or may be texts that are highly familiar because they are of the student’s own devising or the student could be the text, talking of their own experiences. An1 Analysis of the interplay Connections made between personal between what authors experiences, ideas, values, and beliefs, and present in texts and the those explored in texts. These could be experiences, ideas, values, abstract looking at this interplay between and beliefs of readers the author's intentional artifice and the reader's attentional construction and interpretation. Analysis is indirect through the way the speaker tries to engage the audience. This analysis is implicit not explicit, by appropriately addressing the task the student will forge a relationship/dialogue with their audience. Perform to the audience, not at them, attempt to create a connection between speaker and listener to draw the listener into the piece. Connections could be made between society and the material represented and explored in the text. Ap1 Language skills and Knowledge of material (organised) Clearly techniques to create structured (use of a thematic focus) coherent texts that address Displays an understanding of the context the task’s meaning and and nature of a speech/performance piece. intention. Able to use a range of devices both Ap 4 Textual, structural, and structural and textual to convey their conventional features of concerns/ideas. text types and forms of presentation to convey meaning. C1 Accuracy, clarity, and Presents with clarity of voice (tone, fluency of expression. volume, pace, emphasis etc.) C2 Appropriate form and If chosen to use - incorporates resources register for audience and into delivery (PowerPoint, objects, sound, purpose. images, whiteboard etc.) Teacher Feedback A Brief History of Spoken Word and Slam Poetry What do New York’s Nuyorican Poetry Café, South Africa’s Feelah Sistah Collective, and the Annual International Poetry Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden have in common with your classroom? Each are literacy communities dedicated to the craft of writing, speaking, and presentation. Spoken word poetry encourages students to write about their own lives in their own voices and to perform these stories before and audience of their peers. One third literacy, one third rhetoric, and one third theatre, spoken word can open up new possibilities in your classroom. Spoken word poetry is a form of radical performance poetry emerging out of the political urgency of the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975). In the wake of the killings of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., many civil rights activists lost faith that non-violence alone would influence the United States to reform its policy of racism at home and war abroad. To the “left” of the civil rights movement, organizations like Students for a Democratic Society began to organize sit-ins at colleges in New York and San Francisco demanding the creation of black studies departments. Black artists joined the call to arms by declaring war on racism through their art. As part of fighting oppression, black artists also engaged in raising the “consciousness” by spreading messages of black unity, power, and nationalism. Mobile units of performance poets and drummers, spoken word collectives responded by spreading the real news about black revolution and social empowerment on street corners, in community parks, and Black Arts “revolutionary theatres”. The New York-based Last Poets (1968) and LA-based Watts Prophets (1965) are the two Black Arts poetry collectives widely credited with the popularization of the spoken word style. Slam poetry is a business structure that puts spoken word poets in mock competition for cash prizes. Invented in 1989 by white Chicago construction worker and bar owner Marc Smith, poetry slams mock the competition in which “real” poets compete for arts grants, MFA’s, and literary prizes. City-based slam venues are connected to one another through Poetry Slam, Inc., a company that manages a national system through its internet website. At poetry slams, five audience members are chosen at random by the slam master, the master of ceremonies for the poetry slam. The audience members are given a set of numbered scorecards and asked to judge individual or group performances of poetry on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0. The scores are recorded by the slam’s scorekeeper, an audience member or volunteer. Poets must perform their own solo or collaboratively written poetry, without props, and in a maximum time of three minutes and ten seconds. If the poet goes over the time limit, points are deducted from the poet’s overall score. Time penalties are severe and serious slam poets are careful to rehearse to make sure they finish without penalty. The poet or team of poets with the highest score after a round or two of poems emerges the victor. Although some spoken word artists bemoan slam poetry as a commercialization of a politically revolutionary art form, slam poetry is responsible for securing a national and international audience for spoken word poetry. The American Academy of Poets has seen its membership burgeon from 2,000 in 1994 to over 10,000 in 1999, openly crediting the increased interest in poetry to the rise of spoken word and poetry slams. In addition, much slam poetry is politically engaged. For example, when over 120 student poets convened at the 2005 Collegiate National Poetry Slam, the overwhelming majority was unabashedly politically progressive, feminist, culturally engaged, and queer friendly. Every poem performed at a poetry slam is technically a spoken word piece. Spoken word is the name of an art form while poetry slams are a competitive structure in which spoken word artists perform. The term “slam poetry” is the name given to spoken word poetry that conforms to the rules of slam poetry. Slam poems are in-your-face and fast- paced because poets have only three minutes to make their case. When not performed at slams, spoken word poems can be any length and are performed at rallies, cultural centres, and street gatherings. What is spoken word poetry? Spoken word poetry is poetry that is written on a page but performed for an audience. Because it is performed, this poetry tends to demonstrate a heavy use of rhythm, improvisation, free association, rhymes, rich poetic phrases, word play and slang.