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Date: Thursday, October 17th, 2016
Unit: Assignment #4
Lesson: Constructing a rubric for oral presentation for students and I to use during Assignments #4 and #5

 

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For the lesson plan used during this lesson, click here.

 

 

This lesson was slated for October the 17th, 2016. It was meant as a class-wide discussion to help collaboratively construct criteria for a successful oral presentation with Assignment #4’s visual presentation element being the primary focus of said criteria. Writing this over a month later, however, I can attest that the criteria we composed worked so well for grading Assignment #4’s visual presentation element that I used it again to grade students during their presentations for Assignment #5. Given that these criteria were constructed by the students, it also meant that they were fully aware of how I was grading them and it involved them thoroughly in the process of learning what made good presentations.

 
However, looking at this more in-depth, I found that this lesson in particular was not only important for my students to learn about something new, but I too learned quite a lot about a different aspect of teaching that I was originally hesitant to approach: that is, group work. The previous Monday, October the 10th, I had led the class through analyzing posters through the visual analysis terms we discussed and composed as a class (in a similar manner to how we constructed the oral presentation guidelines this class on the 17th focused on). It had not been my intention to direct the class through that lesson, but since my class has always been more receptive to class-wide discussion rather than group work, I relented from my original idea of having groups of students analyze individual posters and share out to the group.

 
As a quick side-note, I believe that the temperament of my class, sociable and curious (which I attribute, at least partially, to my own style of teaching and personality imposing themselves onto college freshmen), is the reason why they’re more receptive to the idea of class-wide work rather than enclosed group work. As such, in order to make that class be as worthwhile as possible, I had chosen to forgo the group work.

 
However, I wanted to change that with my class on the 17th. The results, to my surprise, were quite fantastic. I had firstly placed my students into five, roughly equal, groups. Given that it was my lab day, I had to work around the already-awkward room to try to organize my students in some coherent way, so I ended up placing them in small clusters throughout the U-shaped room. A happy side-effect of that arrangement was that none of my students were looking at the lab’s computer monitors. So, despite them being in groups, the class felt more open than ever. After explaining the purpose of the activity, I assigned each group a W.O.V.E. Pentad aspect to examine, not only from the perspective of what makes a good presentation/presenter, but also a good audience member.

 
This may have just been a small detail that messed particularly well with my high-energy classroom, but I also had each group choose a Recorder and Presenter amidst their number to record and present their work. However, once the jobs were chosen, I had the students pass their jobs to the person on their right. Not only did this immediately engage all of the students who were usually submissive in group-work, but it also forced the more extroverted students to actively take a more subordinate role. Interestingly, after this assignment, in which all of my English-Second-Language learners were either presenters or recorders, said students began to participate exponentially more during class discussions and were more vocal in their groups.

 
After giving the students ten minutes to talk and collaborate, I went from group to group, asking about their ideas. As a departure from my norm, I didn’t write on the white board (it’s simply too difficult for the whole class to see in the lab classroom, I’ve realized) and instead wrote all of the class’ thoughts onto a blank rubric shell (the finished product of which is attached to this same page, towards the bottom). I was actually fairly impressed with how the groups managed to tackle some of the less-clear Pentad elements with some real gusto. For instance, as seen in the actual rubric created from this class (seen here), my students were very keen in their observations and analysis of the Delivery section of the Pentad, even saying that audience members were required to be skilled in the delivery of their message too; to that end, my students posited that clarity in voice, simplicity in questions, and respectfulness as communicated by silence were key featured to being strong in Delivery.

 

 

Additionally, my students, despite them having a similar level of familiarity with oral presentations, managed to construct at least a few points that were wholly unique to each group. Remarkably, after writing down, largely verbatim, what the class’ groups brought up, the finished, official rubric required very little editing and additions. I attribute this to the aforementioned unique elements the students added that I had not even thought of. An example is the nuanced element of what the rubric presents as the first bullet point on the #6, “Some things to avoid as a presenter,” section; my students had suggested that it would not behoove the presenter to overload the audience with text on the screen. I, personally, hadn’t considered the “why” of that element of presentations, but my students realized that it created dissonance between what the audience was reading and what they were being told, orally. So, from this whole class, I saw my quieter students break out of some of their shells and become increasingly-more active in class discussions and my students work together in groups and form more cohesive thoughts for the benefit of the entire class. Needless to say, this proved to be one of my most successful of class periods.

 

 

 

 

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