12 members attended another excellent Pania meeting today, well led by our Toastmaster Barbara, who started on a sweet note by handing out chocolates all round, to celebrate “National Week for School Support Staff” off which she is one!
Barbara had a clear and concise agenda and we started on time and finished a couple of minutes early.Unfortuantely a speaker had pulled out due to ill health and this left us with the one Prepared Speech presented by Jen. It was, however, extremely worthwhile as Jen gave us the sixth assignment from the Competent Communicator manual, “Vocal Variety”entitled “The Crumble Connoisseur”. Jen lounged in a chair, covered by a blanket, reading a book (entitled ‘Memories’) as she took on the persona of her father in a rest home and utilised vocal variety to sing to herself, frequently ask where “Tommy” was and act out the part of an aged person in their final years. It was very well done and Jen has much experience in this area to call on so was very realistic.
Jen was introduced and evaluated by Viv, who while giving her ample commendations was able to offer her some suggestions for improvement.
The Table Topics session was led by Craig, who used a winter theme for his questions. Wendy was asked what she does to hibernate on a cold, wet weekend, in between attending open homes, the fire and wine were a good combination! Brenda had to explain her favourite season(surprise , surprise it was summer) when the kids can play outside! Darryl told us about the changes he would make if he lived in a snowy environment(and he has regularly experienced this in Winnipeg) ,Ian told he would escape to the Islands (South Pacific that is) to avoid winter, but wasn’t sure the hassle would be worthwhile and Cheryl told us about the advantages that she saw in winter and the memories it brings back.
Table Topics were well evaluated by Jan, who was able to give most speakers a suggestion for next time.
Cheryl gave an excellent Grammarian’s report and was not in any way ‘bombastic’ in her approach.The programme allowed her 6 minutes for the report and she was able to fully utilise 5 of them with some excellent feedback on our use of language, good and bad, with everyone getting a mention, well done Cheryl-perhaps we should program a grammarian more often!
Sue stepped in at the last minute as general Evaluator and commented on most of the presenters, with good support, she was ably assisted by Timekeeper Graeme, who would like to think that he kept us to time, when finishing a couple of minutes before 1.00.
Everyone had the opportunity to speak at least once during the meeting and that’s what Toastmasters is all about!
See you all on 20th June, Darryl is Toastmaster.
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