All of the students are eager to present their presentations, but when we had only one student present in a 25 minute class, or 3 students present in a 50 minute class, I realized that I had to make some changes in how we are doing the presentations, or else we would run out of time before we finished with all of the presentations! I brainstormed a little with one of the 4th grade teachers, who suggested having the students just present three main facts for their project. As I considered now to do the presentations, it came to me...
the "30 second Elevator Speech."
The concept of the 30 second "elevator speech" is something like this:
You work for a big company, You are on the elevator of the bottom floor of a very tall building. The President of the company gets on the elevator with you. He asks you "So, how is your project going?" You have only the elevator ride to give your presentation. You have his attention and is your captive audience--but only for the time in the elevator ride. What you want to do is give your key points during the time it takes to get to the top floor of the building. I dramatized it this way--"you work for Microsoft and Bill Gates gets on the elevator. He asks you how things are going. You need to pitch your project to him--but you only have the time that you're on the elevator together, and you want him to get the main points, and become interested enough to want to discuss it further afterward. You also realize that this is your critical opportunity to make your presentation."
I stressed the importance of maintaining brevity while covering the main points effectively. That means NOT reading off of PowerPoint slides, posters, or reading directly from an essay. To guide them, I wrote a quick reference on the board of what they should cover in their presentation. (To be realistic, I gave them 2 minutes instead of just 1 minute...and most went over a little, but most were able to present within 3 minutes). The presentation questions below can apply to just about any topic:
1. What is your topic?
2. Who?
3. Where?
4. When?
5. How?
6. Why?
7. Interesting Fact #1
8. Why is it interesting?
9. Interesting Fact #2
10. Why is it interesting?
11. Big Idea/Take-away
This concept worked like a charm with my 5th grade Dynasty projects! We completed 12 presentations in about 40 minutes. In 4th grade today, we were able to complete 4 presentations in about 15 minutes.
In the future, I will give them the presentation grading rubric before they present, so they can prepare a 1 - 2 minute oral summary, with the specific instruction not to read directly off of notes when presenting. It's a very important skill to have--something that many adults could benefit from learning when making presentations as well!