Congratulations to Jean Stewart on achieving her Advanced Communicator Bronze certificate.
To do this Jean completed two Advanced manuals, “The Entertaining Speaker” and “Humorously Speaking”.
There were 5 projects in each manual making 10 projects in all.
Well done!
This is the report from General Evaluator Sean Gordon.
Our Sergeant at Arms Alison Turner opened the meeting promptly, ensuring that everything was in place, fire procedures were understood, phones switched off and if caught short everyone knew where to go.
We had eleven members attend the meeting, including new member Julian Leanne, but it is the holiday season. This was made up by four guests; Lianna Cairns, Sharon Davies, Sarah Saxelby and Bartek Marzec and everything was set for a great evening.
Our Toastmaster for the evening and his first time in the position was Shane Lukas. Shane is a new member, only joining our club on 11 Apr 16. Shane set the theme for the evening, ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’.
I was impressed by Shane’s performance, as anyone who has taken the role of Toastmaster will tell you it is challenging, but Shane rose to the occasion. Well done.
Our Grammarian, Stephanie Bisby gave The Word of the Day; Encourage, Encouragement, Encouraging, an excellent word which proved popular throughout the evening.
We had two speakers for the evening; Bridget Pearson with a speech titled, ‘Smell the Fear’ – how very appropriate – and Steven Bisby with a speech titled, ‘I didn’t Order that Phantom’, both entertaining and enjoyable speeches.
The speech evaluators were Julie Gordon and Jean Stewart respectively. Both gave a good account of themselves.
The speeches were followed by an Educational Session given by Andy Howell who turned the session around on its head by asking the audience, what they wanted from these sessions? Having just begun a new year in Toastmasters, it was a good question to ask.
Our Toastmaster for the evening, Shane then closed the first part of the meeting and we enjoyed a break.
The second part of the evening belongs to the Evaluators and the ‘Fun Part’ Table Topics.
First the serious part of evaluating; Doncaster Speakers do fantastic in this area and it is important for we all learn to do better by giving this important feedback.
Table Topics, for those who do not know, it is impromptu speaking where the Speaker is given an unknown subject and must speak between 1 to 2 minutes and no one knows where the speech may lead to. The Table Topic Master for the evening was Andy Howell and his theme was to tell a Tall Tale and for the audience to surmise whether it was true or false. Truly original for me and I liked it.
Table Topics was evaluated by Jean Stewart, who did a quick and efficient job.
Finally the awards were announced by Jean Stewart.
Best Speaker Bridget Pearson
Best Evaluator (A tie) Stephanie Bisby
Jean Stewart
Best Table Topic (A tie) Stephanie Bisby
Shelagh Jones
First Timers Sarah Saxelby
Lianna Cairns
Sharon Davies
I, and dare I say it everyone, had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Our next meeting is on Monday July 25th and guests are very welcome to attend (no charge, of course). There is a list of upcoming meetings here
Julie Gordon received her Competent Leadership award from outgoing President Jean Stewart at the meeting on June 27th.
This is a significant achievement for any Toastmaster which usually takes some time to achieve. It involves taking roles to help the smooth running of meetings, mentoring a new member and helping to grow membership. The roles are designed to help a Toastmaster learn, among other things, how to listen, give feedback, manage time, organise and delegate, motivate and build and lead a team.
Many congratulations to Julie and thank you for your contribution to Doncaster Speakers!
The meeting on Monday June 27th was the last of the Toastmaster year –and what a way to end it!
Outgoing President Jean Stewart was immensely generous in providing a hot buffet for all the members and guests as we arrived.
Full marks go to the staff of the Regent Hotel, Doncaster –and everyone’s thanks to Jean
We had a wonderful clutch of Guests to the meeting. Our Area Director Euan Bayliss enjoyed his “official” visit so much that he and Fiona returned for another dose of Doncaster hospitality. Our new Area 21 Director Pauline Westrop came to see what she would have to deal with next year! Impressive to have both of them take roles in the meeting.
In addition we had two ladies visiting to see if they want to join the Club in the future –even if the gorgeous buffet is not a regular feature!
Our meeting Agenda was trimmed a little to keep to the reduced time available but we heard speeches from Shelagh Jones, Jean Stewart and Andy Howell with Shelagh and Andy tying for Best Speaker ribbon.
Prue Richmond , one of our visitors, won the Table Topics ribbon and the Best Evaluation went to Bridget Pearson for her evaluation of Andy Howell’s speech.
We held a vote for the new Committee with the following people elected:
President – Derek Lucian
VP Education –Andy Howell
VP Membership –Jean Stewart
VP PR and webmaster – Shelagh Jones
Treasurer -Andrew Miller
Secretary – Julie Gordon
Sergeant at Arms – Richard Bluck
Jean gave us some amusing and touching reminiscences about her year in office and handed over her ribbon of office to Derek.
His first task as President was to present Jean with a flowers, a card and Swarovski pen (pink crystals – what else!) from the members of the club in appreciation of all her work in having the Club be recognised as Presidents Distinguished Status for the year 2015-2016 – a brilliant achievement.
The first meeting of the new Toastmasters year is Monday July 11th. If you would like to come along you are most welcome. Meetings run from 7.00pm to 9.30pm (please arrive by 6.45pm if you can) and there is no entrance charge for visitors.
The meeting was opened by the Sgt At Arms, Alison Turner. Apart from the members there were five visitors who had come along to find out more about Toastmasters. Also the Area Director, Euan Baylis and his partner, Fiona Dilston, attended and both participated in the evening events.
The meeting was opened by the Toastmaster for the evening, Shelagh Jones. Shelagh’s experience of Toastmasters shone through in the professional way she managed the meeting throughout the evening, and her knowledge of the organisation enabled her to provide in-depth information on what Toastmasters represents.
There were two speakers, Steven Bisby and Sean Gordon. Steven was presenting his second speech, as a new member of Toastmasters, and Sean was delivering speech 10 from the Competent Communications Manual, which will now enable him to move on to working on the Advanced Manuals. Both speeches were delivered well and both contained clear messages with a smattering of humour. Following this their Evaluators provided everyone, including the speakers, with their feedback on these speeches. They included a couple of recommendations, but overall the standard was so good there was little to recommend.
Following the break Andrew Miller took on the role of Table Topics Master. He gave each participant the challenge of speaking for up to two minutes on different EU countries. And as is usual, with no prior warning on the subject matter. For those members who had visited the country chosen this was covered well, but some of the countries chosen were not known to the speakers, however, they managed nonetheless to cover the 2 minutes well. This resulted in much hilarity.
The evening finished with the awards. These were: Best Speaker awarded to Sean Gordon, the Best Evaluator to Euan Baylis, Best Table Topics shared between Fiona Dilston and Stephanie Bisby, and our newest member won the First Timer Award.
The meeting finished at 9.15pm.
Guests are always welcome at our meetings – please see our meetings page for dates.
Our meeting on Monday 9 May was hosted by Andrew Miller, our Toastmaster for the evening. Andrew set a theme “Not all those who wander are lost” and explained this was a line from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Andrew’s interpretation of this was that sometimes we happen upon the unexpected when we least expect it. Fortunately for us all, members and guests had wandered into Toastmasters for what was a very enjoyable evening.
Stephanie Bisby as the Grammarian (a role which is clearly made for our wordsmith of Doncaster Speakers) continued the theme by setting the word of the day “Serendipity”- meaning to discover something pleasant or useful by chance. This was used widely over the course of the meeting.
But first we were welcomed by the Sergeant at Arms, Bridget Pearson who had organised the meeting room. Many members took on roles for the first time and also doubled up on roles as there were a few unexpected absences. So Steven Bisby stepped in at the last minute as the time keeper and ably managed the timing of the meeting. Derek Lucian was the Ah Counter for the evening and in this role he not only picked up on the Ahs and Ums but also identified crutch words we often use unconsciously.
In the first half of the meeting we were entertained by 3 speeches all of very different styles. I was the first speaker with a speech entitled The 3 Hs which was Speech 3 from the Competent Communication Manual – Get to the Point. Steven Bisby in his other role for the evening was my speech evaluator and gave me some useful tips including watching out for my habit of hand wringing.
Jean Stewart had us all laughing with her tales of parenthood and even used a power point to illustrate her theme from pictures of an angelic baby to a 2 year old having a tantrum. This speech was from The Entertaining Speaker Manual – Make them Laugh and Jean certainly achieved this as her speech evaluator Derek Lucian identified. Unfortunately Jean got somewhat carried away and her speech was overlong and did not qualify for the Best Speaker Vote.
The Best Speaker for the evening was awarded to Bridget Pearson who gave us a very moving speech about overcoming her fear of being a blood donor, a fear she was determined to conquer in honour of her Grandfather. Shane Lukas gave Bridget some very useful feedback as her speech evaluator. This was the first time Shane had taken on this role and as a fairly new member to the Club he carried out the role extremely well.
After a short break the evening continued with Table Topics and our Table Topics Master, Stephanie Bisby continued the theme of the evening with topics relating to travel and journeys. We had two guests for this evening and both of them were persuaded to take part and gave good introductory speeches. Well done to them. In the end there was a tie for Best Table Topics between Andrew Miller and myself. Our Table Topics Evaluator for the evening was Jean Stewart who had clearly listened very carefully throughout and as always gave good feedback to all.
Doncaster Speakers