I have hit on a fun and useful way to teach, or give an after dinner speech using anagrams.

1. I prepared an outline of my talk.

2. I anagrammed (at www.wordsmith.org/anagram) a few of the key and a few simple words and phrases relevant to the talk and from the results chose a few useful and funny anagram words and phrases. I spent a few hours doing this and became quicker at it as I went along.

3. I collated the anagrams with relevant clues (but no solutions) as a handout (mostly easy and a few hard ones).

4. I wrote the talk and included the solution words in the talk.

5. I distributed to the audience copies of the handout, shortly before the talk (eg between entrée and mains), and explained that the answers would be contained in the body of my speech, which would be delivered after the main course.

6. The audience then worked in groups to try to solve the anagrams using the clues, while they ate their dinner.

7. I gave the talk.

8. At the end of the talk, we had an audience participation session, asking for members of the audience to suggest the solution to each anagram, one at a time.

It proved to be a very punchy technique. They all listened attentively to my speech, and admired the work I had done preparing it, although it was simpler than they thought with the help of the internet anagram server. It generated light hearted interaction with the audience.

If you use this technique, or adapt it, I would like to hear how you fare.

Have you already done this, or something like it ?
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Votes accepted starting: 02/24/06 08:54 PM
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