Yes I do. Start by getting their attention. A few days before do a harvest of material and worms. Keep a quart of your best vermicompost for display. Get your worms in a slight covering of less vermicompost daily until just the night before. The worms will all burrow to the bottom of your plastic container. To start or before the speech write the addy to this website in bold 10 inch letters on the blackboard behind you. Then reach in and grab a whole lotta squirming love. Take a 6 second up close for better viewing walk around the room and exclaim "These are my friends! I just love these guys! or These are my employees! The love me so they work for free!

I would watch your speech and give a specific critique. I'm harsh but the speakers get way better. Time yourself. Your biggest danger is going over that time limit. Figure every 15 seconds over is one point off of the grade. Be sure to include time for plenty of questions. Have a great finish. Perhaps sprinkle a tablespoon of vermicompost onto a plant the teacher has on her desk.

Don't make me sit there and watch you noisily drill anymore than two holes in that bin or I'm taking points off.

Don't call the drippings worm tea.

P.S. Worms like to sleep a lot so they need lots of bedding.

Don't bring rotting food or even actual food. Bring large pictures to toss into the bin.

You could even start your speech by finishing off an apple and tossing it into the bin.

If you can not fit everything into this one speech do not worry. Save the rest for the persuasion speech where it belongs.

Practice it.

Smile.

I will be counting the ummms, the likes, and silly noises made before correctly pronouncing a word after mispronouncing it. You can bet the teacher is. You are allowed two ummmmms.

Take your time. Look at the audience and give them a big smile. They are not going anywhere for 3 minutes. Put spaces between words, and bigger spaces between sentences. Speak loud enough as a courtesy to the people in the back of the room next to the noisy thing.

Volunteer to go first. Raise that hand right up. Be aggressive. Otherwise some chatty Cathy or Chad will go over their time and you will have to bring your little friends back another day.

Don't make the audience wish they could have those three minutes of life back.

Great advice on how to keep it interesting. How old are the students? They may want to hear a brief summary of some of the benefits of growing plants in vermicompost. I found some of the research on plant growth yield improvements and pest/disease repellency pretty exciting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Highlights from research in Vermiculture Technology

Thanks for the input. My main concern is boring the entire class I know I'll be entertained if I saw a presentation on this subject.

You were very helpful as always equinox I'm hoping to get at least a handful of people interested in vermiculture. I really hate public speaking but it's always easier when you enjoy the topic.

Using pictures instead of bringing food and paper will help me stay under the timeframe so thanks again for that advice.

I'm currently working on the outline for the speech and the hard part is keeping it short. O and this is a college level public speaking class so it's all adults, hopefully somebody in the class gardens.

-drew-

outline for the speech maybe post it here or look at your other speeches and save half of your speech for another one. Like the Convince them they should vermicompost. If you can convince people to vermicompost that is good. I almost think the winner at the present speech is not who does good but to not be one of the 75% of the class that does a 25 minute 5 minute speech.