Pick one of your favorite poems, monologues or speeches and memorize a portion of it according to these standards:
Elementary school: 4 lines
Middle school: 8 lines
High school: 10 or more lines
Next, use your iPhone or other smart phone and record yourself performing a dramatic reading or recitation of the memorized work. Finally, post this to your parent's (or your, as appropriate) Facebook account. If you cannot decide on a piece of work to memorize, here are a few options:
The Bravest Battle
The bravest battle that ever was fought;
Shall I tell you where and when
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
It was fought by the mothers of men.
The Happy Warrior
Whose
high endeavors are an inward light
that
makes the path before him always bright:
Who,
with a natural instinct to discern
What
knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides
by this resolve, and stops not there,
But
makes his moral being his prime care;
Who,
doomed to go in company with Pain,
And
Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns
his necessity to glorious gain;
Tiny Little Minute
Just a tiny little minute,
Just sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t
refuse it
Didn’t seek it, didn’t
choose it,
But it’s up to me to use
it,
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute
But eternity is in it.
Water and Sin
All the water in the world, no matter how it tried
Could never sink the smallest ship unless it got inside.
All the evil of the world and every kind of sin
Could never damn a human soul unless we let it in.
The Ladder of St. Augustine (1858)
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their
companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
