The first meeting of the Mt Sophia Academy Rhetoric team is this Wednesday, September 14, from 2-3:30 in Room 1 at MSA. The Rhetoric Team is open to ALL homeschoolers – you do not have to be an MSA diploma program student to join. See the description below for more information.
If your student is interested in joining the team, you can go to the mtsophia.com website and click the “forms” tab for the registration form (do not go to the “Extracurriculars” tab and click on that registration form – it and the description with it are for last year. We will be correcting it as soon as we can get to it). You can also pick up a form in the office on Monday or just show up on Wednesday afternoon and fill it out that day.
Dates of meetings (2:00 to 3:30): September 14, October 12, November 16, December 14, January 11, February 1, March 1, March 29, and May 3
Dates of optional competitions (beginning at 2:00, end time dependent on the number of students competing): February 15 and April 26
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Barbara Varnell
Rhetoric team coach
The Mount Sophia Academy Rhetoric Team (a fancy name for the speech team) is here to give you opportunities to learn how to feel more comfortable speaking in front of people. The Rhetoric Team has a dual purpose- the first is to offer the students the opportunity to learn how to speak in front of people in a very low-key environment at its monthly meetings. We do this as a combination of teaching and fun speaking exercises. In our monthly meetings, we train you to prepare speeches and presentations and practice exercises that will help desensitize you to speaking in public (while we have fun doing it). Even students who are scared silly have found that they can get comfortable with speaking before a group (some of them still may not like it, but they can do it).
The Rhetoric Team’s second purpose is to offer the opportunity to participate in a number of different competitions (competitions look great on your high school transcript- especially public speaking ones). We offer two optional competitions a year. These competition categories include humorous interpretation, dramatic interpretation, reader’s theater, interpretation of children’s literature, persuasive speeches, descriptive speeches, individual acting, duet acting, TV news team, and visual aid speeches.
Participation in speech-related activities in high school is HIGHLY desirable to colleges. Colleges are looking for students to participate for MULTIPLE YEARS in the same activity, and the low-key nature of our team allows students to do this while fitting in all the academics they need.