Show and tell is an important part of many people’s childhoods, providing them with their first-ever exposure to public speaking.
If you didn’t have show and tell at your school, we’re talking about when everyone in the class is asked to bring something and talk about it. But for this article, we can include any kind of early public speaking that you had at school. For example, I remember that at the start of every new term, we’d be asked to tell everyone else about what we got up to during the holidays.
The TL;DR here is that show and tell supports public speaking because it gives you that all-important practice. But let’s go ahead and take a look at the longer answer.
Here are just ten ways show and tell can help with public speaking.
Much of public speaking comes down to having the confidence it takes to stand up on stage and talk to people you don’t know. When we take part in show and tell as kids, we’re talking to people that we know because we go to school with them, but we still need to stand up and speak about something we’re knowledgeable about. Doing so allows us to develop our self-confidence at an early age and learn to love the art of public speaking.
If your school was anything like mine, show and tell was a regular part of life. We used to do it most weeks, with our teachers asking us to talk about what we did over the weekend. That meant we all had plenty of opportunities to practice our public speaking skills. In my case, I was a big reader, so I got used to reviewing each of the books that I read in front of my classmates. By the time I was asked to present group projects at university, public speaking was second nature.
Show-and-tell sessions foster creativity in young minds, allowing students to find new ways of talking about things that can bring their subjects to life. This is especially true when the object they’re “showing” is something mundane. If you’re talking to people about a tennis ball, for example, there’s only so much that you can say. You’ll be forced to get creative if you want to keep talking.
As public speakers, we’re all more than aware of the importance of our body language. Our mouth can be saying one thing while our body says something very different. We might not know this as kids, but show and tell tends to bring it out naturally. If we get enough practice, we’ll soon become more aware of how our automatic gestures can affect the people around us. Using our body language for self-expression will become inherent.
We owe it to our children to teach them how to carry out research, because that will come in handy throughout their lives. That’s especially true in today’s age of fake news and disinformation on social media. The good news is that when we do show and tell, we need to research our topic beforehand, even if that’s just by talking to our parents or running a quick Google search. These research skills will be useful later on when we’re pitching products or delivering keynotes at conferences.
Preparing for a show and tell requires you to get your thoughts in order and to prepare everything you need in advance. You need to have all of your ducks in a row so that when it’s time for you to speak, you have everything you need. The great thing about learning these organization skills through show and tell is that they’ll still be there when you’re older and ready to take on bigger presentations.
All of this research and organization will allow you to remember the topics that you plan to talk about, whether you make a conscious effort to remember it all or not. As with many of our other points, show and tell acts as almost an initiation into the skills that you’ll rely on in the future. By studying the topics you plan to talk about and remembering the information you discover, you’ll give those memory muscles a thorough workout.
Most teachers include a short question-and-answer session at the end of their pupils’ show-and-tell sessions, and that’s good news for those of us who want to become public speakers. These Q&A sessions are great preparation for when we’re older and ready to answer the audience’s questions at our public speaking engagements. Q&As are notoriously difficult to prepare for, and the only way to practice them is to take part in Q&A sessions.
Storytelling is a vital part of public speaking because as human beings, we naturally respond to stories. We also inherently start using stories when we’re speaking to people, and show-and-tell sessions are great for practicing the art of storytelling. Often, show and tell is geared towards storytelling anyway, such as if a teacher asks the kids to talk about their vacation.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, show and tell teaches us active listening skills. Active listening means giving someone your full attention and listening closely to what they’re saying. We’re able to learn this skill by listening to the other students in class. Active listening will come in super useful as a professional public speaker as you work the circuit, but it’ll come in handy elsewhere in your life, too. It’s a skill that everyone should have.
Now that you know our thoughts on how show and tell can help us become better public speakers, we want to hear from you.
Did you do show and tell at school? If so, do you think it helped you become a better speaker? And do you think the tradition should continue or should schools leave show and tell behind as a relic of an earlier era?
As always, we’d love to keep the discussion going, so be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments. You can also follow us on your favorite social networking sites for more. We’ll see you soon for another article!
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