Year 12 formal speech ideas

[jazcstuart]

As vice captains, a classmate and I have been tasked with writing a speech for our year 12 formal. This is after graduation, where the captains will have already made a speech, so I am kind of worried about living up to their example (they are very good public speakers and have delivered a couple of fabulous speeches in the past).

Because it is for the formal and not graduation, we want to keep it short, light-hearted and funny, but are struggling for ideas. We will be talking about some common experiences like camps, carnivals etc. but it's hard because we are representing a year of around 150 people. It's easy to end up just listing events which sounds really boring (particularly when everyone wants to eat/dance, not listen to long speeches).

So my question is, how do I write an egaging formal speech, without it sounding overly cliche?
My priority at the moment is actually HSC (gasp!) and I don't want to be stressing about this as well, any help and ideas would be greatly appreciated!

[jamonwindeyer]

Hey!! Perhaps you could pick a few memorable moments from those events, like, there’s always inside jokes from those things? That could be a bit more engaging that just listing the events themselves.

You know your year group better than anyone on here does, so you are absolutely best equipped!!

Then tell everyone how amazing it is to see everyone looking so awesome in their suits and dresses, etc etc, that usual boilerplate. Keep it simple! You got this

[Joseph41]

Agree with above - simple is good.

I was vice-captain, too, and did a combined speech with the other vice-captain. I can't really remember what we spoke about, but we kept it short, and I think that was appreciated.

What I'd recommend is literally just dot point like four or five things you want to convey. I think writing speeches becomes easier once you have that sort of dot point structure in place.

Let us know how you're going with it!

EDIT: Accidentally wrote "vice-caption".

[jazcstuart]

Thanks guys 
So far we have a rough draft done, yay. We are kind of playing off the cliche "now for a new chapter in your life" and instead comparing it to a new Netflix season, so we'll see how that turns out  Otherwise we are just talking about our journey through high school and how we made it through HSC!
But yes, we will be keeping it short and sweet! We still have plenty of time because our formal is after HSC, but it's nice to have something done before the start of exams.

[Joseph41]

Thanks guys 
So far we have a rough draft done, yay. We are kind of playing off the cliche "now for a new chapter in your life" and instead comparing it to a new Netflix season, so we'll see how that turns out  Otherwise we are just talking about our journey through high school and how we made it through HSC!
But yes, we will be keeping it short and sweet! We still have plenty of time because our formal is after HSC, but it's nice to have something done before the start of exams.

Nice! Sounds like it's coming along well.

I just remembered: in the speech I mentioned above, I think we spent the first like thirty seconds making Harry Potter puns haha.

[jazcstuart]

Nice! Sounds like it's coming along well.

I just remembered: in the speech I mentioned above, I think we spent the first like thirty seconds making Harry Potter puns haha.

Love it! you can never go wrong with some quality puns 

[Joseph41]

Love it! you can never go wrong with some quality puns 

If only ours were quality! Haha.