'A TOUCHING STORY!!'

Well what a excellent meeting this was on Thursday 29th September!  Barbara quickly set the tone by greeting everyone in a warm and friendly manner.  Rebecca (our newest member) was asked to read the mission statement which she handled very well indeed.

"TURNING 90 and CHUNKING!"

I think you know when the Toastmaster is going to be someone of the experience of Graeme , that you’re going to be in for a treat for our meeting on Thursday 22nd September.

And Graeme certainly did not disappoint, with a meeting that ran as smooth as clockwork.

Our first speaker was Jen, who spoke about turning 90. It was a wonderful lead-in for her speech, as we all knew it wasn’t her age (or should know!). Jen then informed us of her successful weight loss programme, the importance of having a mentor and avoiding sugars at breakfast time. With plenty of humour that Jen has become synonymous for, she also won the award for best speech.

Helen introduced Jen and did an excellent job. One thing I particularly liked was her repeating the objectives, by saying “what we’ll be looking for…”

Anna presented a speech about learning “how to chunk”, which essentially means breaking a reading into “chunks” of phrases. I thought some of Anna’s phrases were brilliant; especially “lift the words off the page”. By reading a passage to us from Lord of the Rings we were able to hear its effectiveness in action. An extremely useful speech for any of us wanting to do a bard at some stage.

Noel did a great job of introducing her, using lovely phrases like “real treasure” and “welcome her presence”, making Anna feel really valued.

Darryl ran our table topics session, with the theme of tattoos, certainly an interesting concept and not surprising from someone with his devilish sense of humour.

Linda was asked if she had to choose a Chinese character what it would be, to which the answer was Lucky Linda! A wonderful topic by Linda, showing great use of pause.

One of our newer members, Sandy, was next. She did a fantastic job talking about latitude and longitude coordinates and how they relate to her journey so far. We found that besides Germany, she’s also been to Spain and the US.

Our final table topic was presented by Stephanie. She spoke about which cartoon character she would choose. We found out she is a Roadrunner fan and that she is also good at table topics, winning the best table topic award.

Helen’s and Noel’s evaluations were both top class. I thought both of them provided a thorough analysis of their respective speeches and their use of gestures was something we could all learn from.

Patrick was our table topics evaluator and he was enthusiastic in his appraisal of our three speakers. He presented some good perspectives on their speeches, in one case speaking longer than the table topic itself! As we know, feedback when first starting is so important.

That left Mike to present his extremely vigilant timekeepers report, with not a second out of place.

I kept my General Evaluators report brief, so that Graeme was quite relieved when we actually finished before the clock was reading 1pm.

'TITANIC,MOTHER THERESA, ROALD DAHL, 9/11 & BATTLE OF BRITAIN!"

Another bright, cheery meeting began with a bright, cheerful agenda prepared by Toastmaster Wendy, whose bright, cheerful attitude provided a bright, cheerful stage on which all role holders performed to their bright and cheerful best – well done everyone!

"SHAKEN OR STIRRED-THOSE WERE THE DAYS!"

September 8^th meeting was chaired by Carol in a very cheerful and ‘spring’ like manner.

Our first speech of the meeting was called, “Those were the Days” and was presented by Graeme who was dressed in a pink jacket and cap just as he may well have done in his youth. He gave us several amusing accounts about his family and the infamous pink motorcycle. Laurel introduced and evaluated Graeme’s speech in a humorous, professional and helpful manner. She turned the speech objectives into questions which she then answered to show that Graeme had in fact achieved these objectives. Cleverly done!

Patrick was our second speaker and Marc introduced and evaluated him very well. Marc is a very experienced toastmaster who recently came to our club from Christchurch and he was able to explain exactly what is going on in Patrick’s life as a toastmaster. Marc said Patrick was, “brave, honest and contrite”. This certainly showed in Patrick’s speech, entitled, “Do you like it shaken or stirred?” Hats off to both Patrick and Marc.

The Table Topic session was conducted by Wendy who had each speaker choose various unknown topics from a bag and talk about them. The idea was to link each topic together and this was done very aptly by the six speakers, David, Jen, Craig, Noel, Darryl and Anna.

Table Topics is a chance to practice impromptu speaking and with six speakers this was a great example of how differently each person handles the opportunity.

Mike was responsible for the evaluation of each speaker. This can be done as a joint evaluation or as individual evaluations. Mike chose to evaluate individually.

Other highlights of the meeting were;

·        Sandy our scientist visitor joined the club, welcome Sandy.

·        And recently relocated Stephanie also visited again and said she was going to join too. Brilliant to have two more members.

·        Our club Table Topic award was back from the engravers so Craig presented it to our contest winner, Laurel. He also congratulated Laurel for her win of the Area contest and Helen for achieving the Area Toastmaster of the Year award.

As General Evaluator Helen completed the meeting by evaluating the evaluators and presenting the meeting awards.

Best speaker; Graeme     Best Evaluator; Marc       Best Table Topics; Darryl

"SPRING SPRANG A GREAT MEETING!"

Our meeting last Thursday , the very first day of Spring, was as warm and welcoming as the day .

Kerry our Toastmaster welcomed us all warmly.

AREA COUNCIL MEETING 2nd September 2016

Around 30 local Toastmasters (plus one from Rotorua) attended an excellent evening of entertainment at the Area D2 meeting on Friday evening 2nd September held at the Greenmeadows Community Centre in Napier.