Yesterday was a day at school when many students were doing year-end presentations for their inquiries. In the morning I visited the Grade 9’s and watched the tail end of one presentation and then the full following presentation. In the afternoon I got to see several Grade 11 & 12 presentations. Overall, I was very impressed!

My biggest takeaways were first how confident the students were. We have created a great culture where presentations happen all the time and students demonstrate that they are comfortable in the front of the room. Also, student feedback is awesome. Students in the audience share genuine praise and feedback.

But the thing that really impressed me was the design of the presentations. The slideshows each had clear themes, and almost all of them were not typical to PowerPoint. They didn’t feel like students took a theme and plugged their slides into them. Rather, they had the look and feel of something designed by the students, and in many cases they did fully design every slide themselves… making sure to have continuity from slide to slide.

From grades 9 through 12 the slide design was better than almost any presentation we would have had at the school 5 or 6 years ago. The students also had a story line through their presentations. Good delivery, good design, good storylines, these students can really put together solid presentations. I could definitely learn a few things from them about creating and delivering a good presentation!