Why join?

Because it’s easy and rewarding! Speech will improve your self-confidence and help develop speaking abilities useful in many academic pursuits. Speech allows you to connect with other successful students promoting positive social connections at school. Speech is fun!

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Schoology Group Code: 7TKX-WXN7-XG7D8

Parents, we need you!

We’d love for you to be involved in your student’s experience in Speech. Here is a way you can help:

• Judging: In order to run each meet, we need to provide one judge per eight students. We need seven to nine judges for every meet. Judging a meet is fun and gives you a chance to see other students demonstrate their hard work. If you would be interested in judging one or more of our meets this year, please indicate this below. We will provide a short in-service about judging speeches at the meet. A training manual is provided.

Interested in judging?

Judging is a rewarding experience and a great opportunity for an adult to see an example of a middle school speech performers.

At a Speech meet, 500-600 students are divided into categories and then placed into groups of 7 or 8 performers within each category. Each group is then matched with a judge and put in a room. 

The students will take turns presenting their pieces to the room while the judge listens and critiques their presentation on a detailed rubric. The rubric sheet is very thorough and gives many examples of what to look for with each aspect of the speech.

To make it easier, each meet hosts a judges' meeting, which explains the meet process and responds to questions. Coffee and breakfast items are served in addition to a district stipend for your time. 

If you would like to judge for one of our meets this year, please send an email to Alana.Pixler@district196.org and indicate which Saturdays you are available.

Speech Judges' Handbook