You will quickly find that we are a very warm and supportive group, that we honestly care about each member's well-being and communication growth.

The meeting can be divided into three parts:

1. Prepared Speeches,
2. Impromptu Speeches,
3. Feedback

Preliminaries
The Sergeant at Arms opens each meeting, then passes control of the meeting to the presiding officer -- usually the club's president. The president will welcome guests, have some opening remarks, then call upon the day's General Evaluator to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and give us a thought for the day -- often reflecting the "Theme of the Day" which was previously determined by the day's "Toastmaster" (think Master of Ceremonies). The presiding officer will then pass control of the meeting to the day's Toastmaster.

The Toastmaster will then call upon the Jokemaster to help us begin the meeting with some laughter. After which, the Toastmaster asks the General Evaluator to return to the lecturn to introduce the evaluation team. The evaluators will give their reports during the third portion of the meeting, but it helps us all to know who will be paying attention to what.

Prepared Speeches
Members giving prepared speeches each work out of a Toastmasters speech manual. These manuals each have several speech projects, each project teaching a specific communication skill (e.g. gestures, vocal variety, organization, etc.) New members work on the ten projects in the Competent Communicator manual, while advanced members work from their choice of any of the fifteen advanced manuals.

Each speech has a range of minutes it is expected to be completed within. For example, the first speech, "The Icebreaker" is a four- to six-minute speech. Others are often five- to seven-minutes, eight- to ten-minutes, etc.

A member is assigned to operate the timing lights to let the speakers know where they stand within their speech project's time range. A green light indicates that the speaker has reached the minimum time allotment and may conclude at any time. A yellow light appears half-way through the time range, and a red light appears at the end of the allotted time range. Speakers actually have a 30-second grace period to wrap up their speeches.

Impromptu Speeches
The Toastmaster will then call upon the Topicmaster to lead us in the second portion of the meeting. Everyone is afforded an opportunity to speak at every meeting. During "Table Topics", members with little or no speaking role are called upon to stand and address a point or answer a question given to them on-the-spot. They are to do their best to give a one- to two-minute speech on their given topic, while incorporating the "Word of the Day" into their talk. This is an exercise in "thinking on our feet".

Guests will be called upon and given three choices during Table Topics: 1) Take a topic; 2) Tell us about yourself; or 3) You may simply pass.

Feedback
Finally, the Toastmaster calls upon the General Evaluator to lead the evaluation team. Each prepared speaker was assigned a speech evaluator to provide positive and constructive feedback on the given speech. A "Grammarian" tells us how well we used the English language, and an "Ah" Counter (who has been clicking our "ahs" throughout the meeting) will report on our use of "crutch" words and sounds throughout the meeting.

The presiding officer will return to handle any end-of-the-meeting business, ask guests to return, and close the meeting by eight-thirty.