I volunteer at the Immaculate Conception Religious Education Program for children every Sunday morning. I teach first graders the basics of the Roman Catholic Religion. It is very important to have good communication skills in this environment because the children are there to learn and take in everything I say during the class. Since they are all first graders, their attention span may be quite short. Thus, it is vital to deliver an entertaining speech so the kids do not get bored and start misbehaving during the class. Even though the lessons are basic it is important for me to be able to make them enjoyable for the kids.

In this Communications class I hope to improve my communication skills and learn to make persuasive and entertaining speeches. It can be difficult to achieve this entertaining communication style because I need to come up with examples, which the kids can connect with and thus make them participate during the class. As we discussed in class on Monday, the way we deliver our speech can depend on the size and type of audience. In this case, I believe a younger audience makes a speech harder to deliver because usually a younger group needs to be entertained in some sort of way in order for them to pay attention. Since I teach kids that are six through seven years old I have to make sure to use vocabulary that is easy enough for them to understand. This is sometimes difficult because in a college environment we are constantly expanding our vocabulary and this makes it a hard transition between both environments. I try to make every topic I teach clear and to the point in order to prevent the kids from getting confused.

Overall, this communications class will come in very handy because as a teacher to a young audience the purpose of my lessons are to both inform and entertain.