Validation

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With my Year 7s this year, I've been working on a unit about presentation. I admit that the initial inspiration for the unit came from Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen and, in it's first iteration, I actually named the unit Presentation Zen. Because my classes rotate on a trimester basis, I get the chance to tweak my units a couple of times a year and from looking at not just what my Year 7s could/couldn't do but also what students in upper years needed to do to be successful, I tried to help the Year 7s build some foundation skills for their secondary years. As such, the unit has evolved from focusing primarily on traditional presentation  (slideshow, speaking in front of the class, etc.) to maintaining that aspect but also adding the idea of presentation of written work, especially in a digital realm such as a blog. With this broadened focus came a renaming of the unit to Presentation Matters which, while it may not have that cool "Z" sound in it, seems to capture the heart of the unit a little better.

The students have done a range of things leading up to their presentations like learning better digital search techniques; taking research and putting that information into their own words in the form of a script; building visual support based on the information they want to communicate (i.e. their script) rather than fitting a script to images; and, all the while, gradually improving the presentation of their blog posts as well. Sometimes, as a teacher, you think up the ideas for the units and, on paper (well, digital paper), you think that things look pretty good and you hope that the learning and understanding that you expect will actually transpire. When I had the students start the trimester with a quickly thrown together presentation in their first lesson, I was impressed by the quality of the work and was beginning to doubt whether the kids would actually have much new learning.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="A Student's Presentation on My Dim Whiteboard"][/caption]

This week, the students have finally gotten to the point where they are presenting in front of their classes. Personally, I thought that the presentations were, in general, quite good but I wondered how much of that came from learning this year versus things they had learned prior to Year 7. Then, after one student had finished her presentation, I heard what I would like to consider a bit of validation that the unit of work has actually been useful. After the presentation finished, a girl in the audience said, "Mr. Jesse, these presentations are so good. I've watched seven presentations in a row and I'm not bored at all. In Year 6, I would have been asleep by now." And with that, we carried on with more presentations. Looking forward to seeing some of the students' reflections that come out of this to see what parts made a difference and what parts need less emphasis next time.