Practicing limited prep events can be tricky. Unlike OO or DI, you can’t just ask the student to perform their piece while you watch. Additionally, the different rules for each round of Broadcasting can seem overwhelming. Once you’ve explained the different rules of Broadcasting, try some of these practice ideas:
Practicing Round One—Commercials:
Beforehand, print out copies of different commercials that may appear at a tournament. Include a wide variety of commercials so students can practice giving different commercials. Have students perform the commercial like they would at a tournament.
After you’ve watched and given feedback on one performance, have the student rehearse the commercial again. While they won’t be able to do this at a tournament, this gives them the opportunity to immediately apply your feedback.
Similarly, after a student practices one commercial, give them another one to rehearse. After the second commercial, note what they improved on last time
Practicing Round Two—Prepared Script:
As much as you can, encourage students to already have their script prepared for practice. If they don’t have a new script prepared, then they can read a script from a previous tournament. Make sure to emphasize, though, that a new script is needed for each tournament.
Pay close attention to voice inflection and enunciation, but don’t discredit the script itself. If something feels off about the content, sit down and look at the script with the student, noting anything that doesn’t read well.
Pronunciation is imperative in Broadcasting. If there’s a word or name that the student pronounces incorrectly, make sure to let them know. If you are unsure of a pronunciation, look it up with the student. It may help to highlight or write out the pronunciation on the script, though a clean copy will eventually be needed for the tournament.
Although creative transitions and sign-on/sign-offs aren’t needed, they help. If you have extra time, work on creativity and originality.
Practicing Round Three—Assigned Script:
Because of the extensiveness of this round, it may be difficult to practice. Although you may not be able to practice the fullness of this round, aim to do a practice round three that includes the 30 minutes of prep at least twice a month. Creating an entire news script would take time, so it’s okay to create just a few and reuse them for practices as long as you don’t use the same script back-to-back. You also do not need to worry about the content being amazing as you will want to focus on the student’s ability to read and practice a news script with a limited amount of time.
Since a news script will need to be created for any tournaments BCHS hosts, hold on to those copies and use them to practice.
For mini practice sessions, prepare a smaller version of a news script (e.g. 1-2 stories) and give students less time (e.g. 5 minutes) to prepare. Cycle through to practice the different components of a news script (commercial, sign-on/sign-off, domestic story, etc.)
Practicing Finals: News Program
Like round three, practicing a final round requires a lot of preparation and energy. While it is important to practice the extensiveness of a final round, breaking it up into chunks is just as effective.
Like round three, save any copies of scripts for BCHS tournaments, and feel free to use a few news programs that you cycle through.
To practice a student’s ability to edit a news program, give students 1-2 stories and have them cut the stories to fit a smaller time period of 1-2 minutes with preparation of around 5 minutes. This mirrors the entirety of the final round in which students have 30 minutes to edit a lengthy packet to a 5-minute performance.
Because an impromptu commercial is also a part of the final round, prepare commercial topics and give students a few minutes to prepare, practice, and deliver a commercial.
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