Topic Selection & Outline Draf

Basic Speech Outline w Section Instruction Notes

I. Introduction

a. Attention Getter: A quick statement/quote/story that will grab the audiences attention.

b. Credibility Statement: Brag on yourself. Tell us why we should be listening to you. What makes you the subject matter expert.

c. Preview of Main Points: One quick sentence that lays out the structure of the speech. For example, “Today I want to tell you about X and Y.”

Transition: “So lets get started with X” or “Lets jump into X” …. Something that tells us where the speech is going.

II. Main Point I: Your first topic

a. Support: Information that explains your first topic.

b. Support: Different information that explains your first topic.

Transition: Sentence that wraps up your first point and introduces the next. This is ONE sentence.

III. Main Point II: Your second topic

a. Support: Information that explains your second topic.

b. Support: Different information that explains your second topic.

IV. Conclusion

a. Review of Main Points: “Today we discussed X and Y”

b. Closing Statement: This is similar to the attention getter. It can be a story, quote, statistics, etc. Be careful not to introduce a new point in the conclusion.

Reference Page

1. Michael Collins – Apollo 11 3rd man

2. Kia Silverbrook – Australian Inventor

3. Gustav Whitehead – Pilot

4. Amy Johnson – British Amelia Earhart

5. Alfred Russel Wallace – Darwins scientific rival

6. Lori Lightfoot – Chicago’s first black female lesbian mayor

7. Ferdinand Demara – Imposter

8. Bayard Rustin – MLK key advisor/Medal of Freedom

9. Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike – PM of Sri Lanka 1960

10. Monica Roberts – Trans rights activist/journalist

11. Shirley Chisholm – 1st female AA elected to congress

12. Tecumseh – Native American warrior

13. Jim Thorpe - first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States

14. Newton Perry - Weeki Wachee, Fl mermaid visionary

15. Alexander Fleming – antibiotics

16. Gregory Goodwin Pincus – oral contraceptives

17. George de Mestral – Velcro

18. Stephanie Kwolek – Kevlar

19. Dr. James Duke – Trauma Surgeon

20. Haskell Karp – 1st artificial heart transplant recipient

21. Sonia Sotomayor – 1st Hispanic supreme court member

22. Margaret Montoya – 1st Latina admitted to Harvard Law School

23. James McCune Smith – 1st AA to hold a med degree

24. Millicent Mackenzie – 1st female professor in the UK

25. Ruth Simmons – 1st AA woman President of an Ivy League/Brown Uni

26. Irene Joliot-Curie – Nobel Prize in Chemistry

27. Candy Lightner – MADD Founder

28. Tiananmen Tank Man

29. Frank Wills – Watergate Security Officer

30. Lilly Ledbetter – Fair Pay Act

31. Irena Sendler – Polish Social Worker in 1939

32. Tim Berners Lee – Created the WWW

33. Joseph Warren – Father of Revolution

34. Grady Stiles – Lobster Boy

35. Ignaz Semmelweis – disinfectant

36. Christine Jorgensen – 1st trans person to have sex reassignment surgery

37. Katie Mulcahey – Fought The Sullivan Ordinance in NY

38. Leif Erikson – Norse Explorer

39. Jeanette Rankin – elected to congress in 1916

40. Cai Lun – invented paper

41. Dr. Goodenough – lithium batteries

42. Hedy Lamarr – frequency hopping

43. Jean Lafitte – French pirate

44. Paul Williams – celebrity architect

45. Otis Blackwell – musician

46. Rosalind Franklin--key figure in the discovery of the structure of DNA

47. Maurice Hilleman--microbiologist who was pioneer in vaccine development

48. Daniel Burnham--influential architect and city planner for Chicago

49. Ted Parker--one of the greatest field ornithologists 

50. Amelia Boynton Robinson – Civil rights activist

51. Diane Nash – sit ins

52. Andrée de Jongh, aka Dédée - woman who formed the Comet line

53. Susan Kare - the Mac more user-friendly

54. Beulah Henry – inventor

55. Khaled Mohamed Saeed – killed for being online

56. Shuping Wang: Whistleblower who exposed HIV scandal in China

57. Philo Farnsworth – The actual inventor of the television

58. Nellie Bly – journalist

59. Upton Sinclair - infiltrated the Chicago meat packing industry

60. Judith Butler – gender and recognition philosopher

61. Slavoj Zizek –philosopher