Toastmasters meeting script
This script can be used for your Toastmasters meetings as a guide to help you through the first few nervous times you are called on to be the Toastmaster or any other role. Having notes or a guide will help you improve your public speaking skills and help to ease your nervousness during the meeting. This guide or script can be used for any role you were chosen to perform for your next meeting.
**New attendee or guest: **If you at just interested in attending a Toastmaster's meeting or would like to visit one soon as a guest, read through this script to help understand what is spoken and the general flow of the meeting. Each meeting could be different but this can be used as a general guide to help familiarize yourself with the flow and format of a typical Toastmasters meeting.
Having an ideal of what will happen will calm your fears and let you know what to expect at each meeting. Don't be intimidated by the meetings. It's easy and fun to conquer your nervousness while speaking in front of groups of people. Attending a Toastmasters meeting will help develop your confidence and challenge you to diminish your fears while speaking in public.
Toastmaster role: To use this script: Copy the following text to your favorite text editor and use the "Edit: Find and replace-all" function of your text editor to find and replace the capital letter place holders marked with three capital letters. For example: Find all instances of AAA=name of president, replace AAA with the name of the club president. Whenever the script call the name of the president, it will be shown as his/her name and not AAA.
For example: President ___XXX, use (replace-all) to find all instances of XXX, then replace all XXX with the name of the President.]
BEFORE THE MEETING, OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION, AND REPLACE THE TEXT USING YOUR TEXT EDITOR.
EDIT THE FOLLOWING by replacing the three letters with the persons name.
PRESIDENT: ___AAA
TOASTMASTER: ___BBB
GRAMMARIAN & AH-COUNTER: ___CCC
TIMEKEEPER: ___DDD
TABLE TOPICS MASTER: ___EEE
GENERAL EVALUATOR: ___FFF
GUESTS FIRST NAMES: ___GGG
WORD OF THE DAY: ___HHH
NUMBER OF SPEECHES TODAY: ___III
SPEAKER #1 NAME: ___JJJ
SPEAKER #2 NAME: ___KKK
SPEAKER #3 NAME: ___LLL
EVALUATOR #1 NAME: ___MMM
EVALUATOR #2 NAME: ___NNN
EVALUATOR #3 NAME: ___OOO
NAME OF CLUB: ___PPP
ONCE EDITING IS COMPLETE, PRINT THE SCRIPT AND HAVE A COPY AT THE PODIUM. HAND ANY NEEDED COPIES TO THE OTHER MEMBERS WITH ROLES AND PARTICIPANTS, LIKE TIME KEEPER AND TABLE TOPICS MASTER AND GRAMMARIAN.
START OF SCRIPT:
[President]: I would like to call this meeting to order. Welcome fellow Toastmasters and esteem guests. It’s my privilege and pleasure to welcome you to the ___PPP Toastmasters Club. As President I would like to recognize any guests we have today. Do we have anyone new guests here today?
Thank you for attending our meeting today.
Today we have ____III speeches and we hope everyone will participate in either the meeting roles or the Table Topics.
Let’s start this meeting by having our Toastmaster for today come to the podium.
Please welcome _____BBB.
[applause, shake]
[ Toastmaster ]: Thank you Madam (Mister) President, fellow Toastmasters and honored guests. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our specials guests who are here to join us today. Thanks to any of our members or guests who can participate in the meeting today.
Welcome and we hope you will enjoy our meeting and we also would like you to participate in our meeting today. You will have a chance during our Table Topics.
There are two main parts of our Toastmasters Club meeting. Firstly, the Prepared Speech session is where we have our members delivering speeches based on the 10 projects from the basic Communication & Leadership Manual.
In part 2 of our meeting we will have members and guests practice their “Thinking and Speaking on their feet” skills. This is also known as the impromptu Speech section of this meeting.
As Toastmaster of the Day, it is my duty to introduce the appointment holders who will assist in the running of today’s meeting. I would like to introduce our General Evaluator who will introduce the team who will describe their duties.
Please welcome to the podium our General Evaluator for today, Madam (Mister) _____FFF
[applause, shake]
[General Evaluator]: Thank you very much Madam (Mister) Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and honored guests. As General Evaluator for this meeting, I will be observing the meeting, making notes, and offering reports and general comments at the end of the meeting. In addition, I have a team who will be assisting me in these duties.
I would like to introduce my team now and ask each of them to stand and briefly describe the role they will be performing today.
Madam (Mister) Timekeeper, would you please stand and describe the timing sequences for the prepared speeches today.
[Timekeeper]: Thank you Madam (Mister) General Evaluator.
One of the skills of a Toastmaster is to deliver a speech within a strict time limit. In order to accomplish this task we will be using a timer and three cards, green, yellow and red to signal the speaker.
Anyone who will present their “Icebreaker” speech today will be given four to six minutes to complete the speech. This means you must pass the four minute mark but not exceed six minutes by more than 30 seconds for your speech to qualify. If you exceed the 4 and a half seconds you will need to repeat the speech at a later date and you will not be in the running for the “best speech” competition held at the end of this meeting.
For all other speeches presented today from the Toastmasters Competent Communication manual, you will be given 5 to 7 minutes. Your speech must last longer than 5 minutes which will be signaled by me holding up a green card. At 6 minutes, I will hold up a yellow card. When you see me hold up a red card, you will have 30 seconds to complete your speech or it will not qualify.
The green card will be raised once you qualify, a yellow card will be raised during the midway point. Once you see the red card raised, you will have 30 seconds to complete your speech to qualify.
Speech Duration:
4 – 6 minutes for Ice Breaker speeches:
Green card at 4min,
Yellow card at 5min,
Red card at 6min
5 - 7 minutes for manual speeches:
Green card at 5min,
Yellow card at 6min,
Red card at 7min
1 - 2 minutes for table topics:
Green card at 1min,
Yellow card at 1.5min,
Red card at 2min
[General Evaluator]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Timekeeper.
I would now like to introduce our Grammarian and AH-counter____CCC.
Please stand and describe your role.
[Grammarian and AH-counter]: Thank you Madam (Mister) General Evaluator. The Grammarian role points out any obvious or not-so-obvious mistakes in word usage, grammar, and pronunciation. As AH-counter, I help cure the speaker of the annoying habit of “vocalized pauses”, like Ahhh, errr, and uhhh’s. By counting all of the filler words the speaker uses, I hope the speaker will realize and correct their bad habits.
I will also record anyone who successfully uses the “word of the day”. Today’s word is _____HHH. To qualify your speech, you will need to use the “word of the day” into your speech. Thank you.
[General Evaluator]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Grammarian.
Now is the time for the prepared speeches. And to introduce the Speakers will be the Toastmaster. Please welcome back our Toastmaster.
[Toastmaster]: Thank you Madam (Mister) General Evaluator]: Today we have ______III. After each speech we will all take a minute to write down some notes for the speaker to use as an evaluation of their speech. This will let the speaker know what they did well and what they need to improve on.
Our first speaker today is _____JJJ. (give intro/bio of speaker) Their Evaluator will be _____MMM.
[applause, shake]
Our first speaker today is _____KKK. (give intro/bio of speaker) Their Evaluator will be _____NNN.
[applause, shake]
Our second speaker today is _____LLL. (give intro/bio of speaker) Their Evaluator will be _____OOO.
[applause, shake]
[after each speech]
[Toastmaster]: Thank you for that speech. Everyone please take a minute to fill in your evaluation forms for that speech. [wait one minute].
[Toastmaster]: It’s now time for the impromptu portion of our meeting. The Table Topics should challenge us and help us think on our feet without any preparation.
Please help me welcome our Table Topics Master to the podium today.
[applause, shake]
[Table Topics Master]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Toastmaster, Fellow Toastmasters and guests.
The purpose of the Table Topics portion of our meeting is to provide an opportunity for members of the audience to practice impromptu speaking.
Each Table Topics speaker is encouraged to remember and use the “word of the day” in their response to the question posed. Again, today’s “Word” is _____HHH. A speaker is required to use the “Word of the Day” in order to qualify for the vote for Best Table Topics Speaker.
Madam (Mister) Timekeeper can you please stand and explain your role during the table topic speeches?
[Timekeeper]: Madam (Mister) Table Topics Master, fellow Toastmasters, and guests, I will be timing our Table Topics responses and the prepared speech evaluations. Our goal is to complete each speech after the green card is shown and before the red card appears.
I will show the green card starting at 1 minute into the speech. I will continue holding up the green card until a minute and a half when I will raise the yellow card. At 2 minutes into the speech I will hold up a red card. You will have 30 seconds after I raise the red card to finish your Table Topics speech. If you continue past 2 minutes and 30 seconds your speech will not qualify for the voting.
1 - 2 minutes for table topics:
Green card at 1min,
Yellow card at 1.5min,
Red card at 2min
[Table Topics Master]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Time Keeper for that explanation.
The time given for your impromptu response will be 1 to 2 minutes. Would anyone like to volunteer or may I call on someone?
[Volunteer or someone is chosen]
Thank you so much for participating in the meeting today. Could you give us your name? Thank you. Here is your first topic….
[First Table Topics participant]
[Second Table Topics participant]
[Third Table Topics participant]
I’d like to thank all our participants today. And now may I have the Time Keepers report. Please say the times for each of the speakers.
Thank you Madam (Mister) Time Keeper.
May we have the “Word of the Day” usage report from the Grammarian?
Thank you Madam (Mister) Grammarian.
It’s now time to cast your vote for the “Best Table Topics” speaker and pass your ballot to the Vote Counter/Time Keeper.
I now return the meeting to our Toastmaster.
[Toastmaster]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Table Topics Master for those challenging topics.
It’s now time for the evaluations of each speech to begin.
Our first Evaluator is ______MMM who will give their evaluation of our first speech given by ____JJJ.
Please welcome ____MMM to the podium.
[after evaluator #1]
Thank you ____MMM for that evaluation.
Our second Evaluator is ____NNN who will give their evaluation of our second speech given by ____KKK.
Please welcome ____NNN to the podium.
[after evaluator #2]
Thank you ____NNN for that evaluation.
Our third Evaluator is ____OOO who will give their evaluation of our third speech given by ___LLL.
Please welcome ___OOO to the podium.
[after evaluator #3]
Thank you to all our evaluators today.
Please take a moment to cast your vote for Best Evaluator today and pass your ballots to the Timekeeper.
I would now like to ask the General Evaluator to come to the front and give an overall evaluation of the meeting.
[General Evaluator]: Thank you Madam (Mister) Toastmaster. As General Evaluator it is my task to evaluate our meeting today.
Today’s meeting was:
Well prepared
Started on time
Guests were welcomed and encouraged to participate
All meeting roles explained
All greetings conducted at the podium
The Table Topics were engaging and entertaining
I would also like to add improvements that can be made at our next meeting.
I will now give the meeting back to our Toastmaster of the Day.
[Toastmaster]: Thank you Madam (Mister) General Evaluator. Thank you fellow Toastmasters and thank you to all the guests we had at our meeting today.
Now the exciting moment that all of you have been waiting for, the Presentation of Awards.
Today’s winners of the Best Speech is _________
Today’s winner of the Best Table Topics is ___________
And today’s winner of the Best Evaluator is ___________
Thank you to everyone who participated and to all fellow Toastmasters and guests. We hope you will attend our next meeting which will be at this same room at the same time next week.
END OF SCRIPT
END OF MEETING