Presentations

Our groups presented their projects to their teacher advisor on June 7.  I had the opportunity to watch 4 groups since one of the teachers was sick.  I was pleasantly surprised with what the kids came up with.  The groups I observed had created a product, and a slide show to go with it.  What I was not expecting was the presentation skills that I witnessed.  Most of the students, if not all, were simply reading the slides or notes off of papers.  They had spent so much time doing the project part that they were not really prepared for the presentation itself.  Another thing we did on this day was a self and peer evaluation of all of the group members.  Many students were very kind to group members that the teachers knew had contributed very little to the entire project.  One student even left the class and didn't return on the presentation day and the other student still gave her level 3 and 4 marks on her peer evaluation even though it meant that she did the presentation by herself!!  According to the other teachers involved in the project, the presentations themselves were not impressive.  There were also some groups that actually had nothing to present, so again the question of what do we do with that?  Teachers did evaluate the projects that they saw, and will give those marks to the "home" teacher for those students.  It will be up to each individual teacher to decide how they will use those marks.  Each teacher has already communicated the value of this project to their students.  Next step is to create an exit survey and find out what the kids thought of the whole process.