Five-Week Plan
A week-by-week sequence from prompt analysis to quick structures, recovery, timing and a final round of drills.
Open resource →
Year 9 Power of Speech • Oratory
Impromptu
A five-week unit on speaking with little or no preparation. Students learn how impromptu works, how to read a prompt, how to use quick structures, how to open and close under pressure, how to find evidence in the moment, how to use humour, how to manage time and how to stay calm.
What this packet is. It contains 16 public resources, including this overview. Students move from the demands of impromptu and prompt analysis to quick structures, openings, evidence under pressure, thinking on their feet, humour, timing, nerves and a final round of drills. The prompts and model responses are original, and the success criteria are formative and labelled as such.
Unit outcomes
- Explain what impromptu speaking demands and what it does not.
- Analyse a prompt quickly and choose a workable angle.
- Use at least three quick structures to organise a response.
- Open and close a short impromptu speech with purpose.
- Find and use evidence, examples and analogies under time pressure.
- Recover from a blank, a stumble or an unexpected interruption.
- Use humour and warmth appropriately.
- Deliver a one- to two-minute impromptu response with control.
The five-week shape
| Week | Focus |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | What impromptu asks. Distinguish preparation from thinking; analyse prompt types; record a baseline response. |
| Week 2 | Quick structures. Practise PREP, past–present–future and problem–solution; build openings and endings. |
| Week 3 | Evidence and thinking on your feet. Use personal examples, analogies and general knowledge; practise recovery moves. |
| Week 4 | Humour, timing and nerves. Test gentle humour; drill time limits; build a pre-speech routine. |
| Week 5 | Drills and delivery. Run a carousel of prompts, deliver a final response and reflect on one change. |
Public resources
Outcomes and Skills
What impromptu rewards, what it does not, and how to build a reliable response under pressure.
Open resource →What Impromptu Asks
Why thinking on your feet is a skill, not a talent, and what a good impromptu response actually needs.
Open resource →Prompt Types
Objects, quotations, questions, images and scenarios: how to find an angle in whatever you are given.
Open resource →Quick Structures
PREP, past–present–future, problem–solution and more: reliable maps for a response you have to invent now.
Open resource →Openings and Endings
First sentences that start the speech and final lines that land it, even when you had ten seconds to plan.
Open resource →Evidence Under Pressure
Personal examples, general knowledge and analogies: what to reach for when you have no research time.
Open resource →Thinking on Your Feet
Recovery moves for blanks, stumbles, interruptions and the moment your planned point disappears.
Open resource →Humour and Warmth
Gentle humour that includes the room, and the warmth that makes an impromptu response worth hearing.
Open resource →Timing and Pacing
How to fill a minute, land a two-minute limit and avoid the two opposite disasters: running out and running over.
Open resource →Managing Nerves
A pre-speech routine, a reset for mid-response panic and a realistic approach to performance anxiety.
Open resource →Impromptu Drills
Fast, repeatable exercises that build fluency, structure, recovery and timing.
Open resource →Delivering an Impromptu
Putting it together: prompt, angle, structure, evidence, delivery and a clean close under time.
Open resource →Teacher Notes
Planning, differentiation, sensitive content and classroom protocols for the Impromptu unit.
Open resource →Sources and Provenance
What is original, what is excluded, and how the packet handles prompts, quotations and copyright.
Open resource →Planning and support
Read the teacher notes for planning, differentiation, sensitive content and participation guidance. The sources and provenance page records what is original, what is excluded and how the packet handles copyright. Differentiation is built into the teacher notes rather than published as a separate student page. The sources and provenance page records what is public, what is linked rather than copied, and what the packet deliberately leaves out.
No assessment instrument. This packet does not publish confidential class briefs, scores, bands, weights, task numbers, due dates or test papers. It is a teaching and formative-feedback resource. Teachers keep their own school instruments offline.
Last reviewed: October 2026. Counts on this page match the public HTML pages in this folder.