Material Detail

This goal-directed instructional design plan aimed at improving presentation skills for 5th grade students is well done.  It incorporates technology in a way that enhances learning.  The key to this lesson was the pedagogy employed by the teacher that was focused on inquiry. 

First, the teacher wisely provided links to several potential explorations that students would explore.  By providing the sites, it helps to narrow the focus for the 5th grade students, and it also provided engaging topics that would help students ultimately to produce more engaging presentations.  Throughout, the lesson, students are asked to explore their process.  Questions such as what makes for an excellent presentation, and how images impact on creating a great presentation are addressed.  There is even mention of students recording their process by using Titanpad.  Students benefited from working collaboratively to help develop their own final product, and process is emphasized throughout.

While this lesson is outstanding as it is, I would offer the caution that students develop a comfort level with the technology prior to delving into a lesson that ends with presentations geared for a parent audience.  Additionally, I would elaborate on the checkpoints that you are looking for in the process journal that students were asked to create.

Fantastic lesson that a libraian created that could be used with any subject area to enhance presenation skills.

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This is a great lesson plan and well appropiate for the age level to learn such skills. I agree with the fact that most students do lack presentation skills and often times they get up there and all they do is present their powerpoint word by word and without context. They lack motivation and have a tremendous fear to face their peers while presenting. I believe this lesson plan helps the student prepare themselves better for the presentation. One is by providing guidance in researching about the topic in order to be more informed. It is a great strategy to provide "selected teacher gathered links to start the research process". Second, I also find it helpful that students will be working in groups of threes or fours in order to provide support for one another while doing the research work. Collaborative work will do wonders, but then the lesson plan becomes even better because each student is then able to work on a final individual presentation. As we have learned this will difinitely be more meaningful for the learner. Third, interpreting visuals is another great strategy. Like the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words". If the student is able to provide meanigful visuals for their audience, then will have a greater impact on them recalling the information.

Although, this is a great lesson plan, I have a couple of suggestions. First, I see that there will be enough teacher to student and peer to peer support. However, by following the UDL Guidelines, it would be more beneficial for students to work with a rubric or checklist while they go through the research process or while making the actual powerpoint or keynote presentation. I believe this will help the student create an even better presentation. Second, are Powerpoint and Keynote the only two choices to use as presentation tools? I will suggest two more which I have use online and provide the same results as the others if not better; they are Prezi and Google Docs. In my opinion students should have more choices to use as presentation tools in order to help them achieve more individuality. Overall, this is a great lesson plan and I truly believe your students will benefit from it an acquire skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

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