All Watseka Junior High students are invited to be a part of the speech team each fall. Speech team provides opportunity to build confidence in public speaking, and that confidence helps students in all areas of academics, extracurricular, and beyond. Every student has the opportunity to be a part of the team. At the beginning of the school year, literature teachers will introduce speech, and interested students will choose speeches. They have many categories from which to choose.
Monologue 5-10 minutes
Regular Duet 5-10 minutes
Poetry 4-7 minutes
Original Script Monologue 5-10 minutes
Original Script Duet 5-10 minutes
Impromptu Speaking 1-8 minutes (Individual)
Small Group 5-10 minutes (3-5 students)
Choral Reading 6-10 minutes (9-20 students)
Improv Duet 8 minutes
Team Improv 10 minutes (4-6 students)
At WJHS, 6th graders are permitted to participate in monologue, poetry, regular duet, and small group. 7th graders are permitted to participate in monologue, poetry, regular duet, original scripts, small group, and improv duets. 8th graders may participate in any event. Students may compete in more than one event, providing all IESA rules are followed. We provide a large variety of speeches from which the students can choose.
Once students have chosen their speeches, they will be assigned a speech coach who will work with them to help them improve. They will commit to time during study halls, directed study, and before and after school, whichever works best for their schedules. Many speech participants are also active in baseball, girls’ and boys’ basketball, youth football, science club, marching band, and church.
The WJHS speech team competes in two speech competitions each year. One is the County Contest, which is hosted on a rotating schedule among county schools. In this contest, each school is allowed to bring only 10 entries. We also compete in the IESA Literary Contest which is also hosted on a rotation basis. This is the larger contest, and all of the speech team participates. The contest date changes yearly, at the host school’s discretion, but they are normally held at the end of October and the beginning of November. Students must be eligible in order to compete in either of the contests.
We encourage all students to participate in this valuable activity. For more information, visit the IESA website which includes rules, regulations, and videos.