Your presentations will be 9-11 minutes long. Each project will vary greatly because all topic are different, however, the basic skeletal structure will be similar from presentation to presentation and topic to topic. The best way to think of this presentation is that is a message, not a report. If you think about it as a message, your presentation will mean more to your audience.

First, you have to answer the three questions:

1. What do I want from my audience? You are not just delivering information, and your audience should come away with meaning, not just information.
2. Why should my audience care? Give them a reason why your presentation matters.
3. What is the point of this presentation? This question should be answered in one sentence.

Your presentation will consist of three main components: The Ramp and Roadmap, the Process, and the Reflection. You will be using Google Presentation for your slideshow. Remember, the slideshow is only a tool that supports your presentation, and as a result should not be the focus of what you are saying. Throughout your presentation, you should be focusing on the following flow chart. If you communicate this information, you will have a very good chance of passing this portion of the 8th Grade Project:

What was your Goal? ---> How did mentor support the Goal? --->

What was your process helping you to achieve your Goal? --->

Whether or not you succeeded in achieving your Goal, what did you learn along the way?

8GP: Presentation Notes and Outline/Storyboard Presentation Guidelines

Remember, this presentation is for your audience to SEE, not for you to read. This implies several guidelines:

1. Keep your words large enough (> size 24).

2. Limit the number of words you put on a page

• Avoid paragraphs
• Use bullet points
• Use succinct phrases instead of sentences
• Limit each slide to 6 bullet points

3. Fancy is not always better! Stick with simple fonts!

• Fonts "with feet" are easier to read (in a paragraph)
• Fonts "without feet" make nice titles

4. Choose color combinations that make your text easy to read.

5. Limit graphics to 1-3 per page. Too many graphics can be distracting.

6. Slides are designed to supplement your presentation---not to BE your presentation. Keep it simple, and don't read your presentation word for word from your slides.

7. Basic rule of presentations----Bells and whistles are fun to put in, but they tend to be distracting for the viewer. Avoid inserting transition or animation.

8. Make a plan: Fill out a storyboard before you begin to put your presentation together. It will help you stay organized, and things will get done faster.

9. Proofread and spell check! Proofread and spell check!

This slide should introduce the topic for your project and should include your name. This should be visually pleasing and should include some kind of graphic.

This should constitute between 1-3 minutes of your presentation.

Initially, you want to introduce yourself and thank the audience for coming to watch your 8th Grade Project presentation. The Ramp is your opportunity to sell the audience on the topic and the message of your project. This is a hook that captures your audience and serves as an opening for your presentation. It may require you to do some additional research depending on which path you choose to take. Be creative and have fun creating this part of the presentation. There are four main ways to create The Ramp for your presentation:

1. “You” – Try to make your message meaningful to your audience. Put them in the situation where they can visualize the importance or your topic.
2. “Imagine” – Ask the audience to imagine a hypothetical or real event that illustrates the importance of the topic.
3. “Shocking Numbers” – Give your audience shocking or interesting statistics that help give weight to your topic.
4. “Storytelling” – Telling a story lends magnitude to your topic. Be sure that your story has rising action, climactic moment, and a resolution.

Roadmap

A roadmap is simply one or two sentences that outline your presentation. This assures your audience that there is a plan for your presentation. You should give the three major objectives for your presentation, and it should fit into one sentence. It should begin with something like, "Today I am going to discuss with you...."

Slides: For The Ramp, your slides should be relevant to the path that you choose to take. Do not feel compelled to make the slides be the focus of your presentation. Instead, they should only support what you are saying. As for your Roadmap, you can include a slide with this information as well, but don’t feel compelled to make one. Ultimately the eyes of your audience should be on you, not on the slides behind you.

This should constitute between 5-7 minutes of your presentation.

You should aim for a smooth transition to The Ramp and Roadmap to Your Process.

• Initially, communicate to your audience what you envisioned your physical project to be. What was your goal when you started your project? Discuss what you hoped to accomplish by going through this process.
• Then, describe in detail the process you went through while working on the physical part of your project. This should be a step-by-step description of what you did in order to make that vision come to life, from first contacting your mentor to the completion of your project. If you think of your physical project as a story, this might be easier to discuss. As you are doing this, keep in mind that you should be accounting for the 25 hours that you spent doing the work, which is the requirement for completion of your project.
• Highlight any key findings or insightful experiences that happened during Your Process. If you can, make some connection to the initial research that you did for your paper and how it was useful in transitioning to your physical project.

Slides: Again, your slides for this should only be support. Do not feel that you have to necessarily include slides for every single step that you went through. While you can do this, it tends to distract from the message and information of your presentation. Instead, try to use photographs of you doing the work or other important graphics that give your audiences visual supports for what you are saying while you present.

As with Your Process, try to make The Reflection as smooth a transition as possible.

• Thoroughly reflect on what you learned from completing the project. Avoid saying, “better time management,” because this is cliché and a basic fact that all humans procrastinate. Give your honest feedback to your audience about the important information that you gained from this experience.
• Reflect on what went well and what you could have done differently. What were some of the highlights and lowlights from your physical project? If your project went smoothly, that is and easy thing to communicate, but if things didn’t go as well as you had hoped, perhaps try and communicate how things could have gone better.
• Discuss whether or not you met your goals for this project. Go back to the initial goals that you discussed during the Your Process portion of your presentation. Did they work out?

Slideshow: Once again, do not overdo it with slides. We want your audience to focus on you. Slides should only support what you want to say during The Reflection, and should act as a guide. Include any relevant photos that can help tell the story of what you learned from this process.

Acknowledgement

Thank anyone who helped make this project possible, including your mentors.

Work Cited

Cite any sources that you used for your project, or from which sources you borrowed any photograph. If you did any interviews and gained any knowledge about your topic that you used in your presentation, you must cite that as well. Just like in you paper, your sources must be cited in MLA format.

Q and A

This is the opportunity for your audience to ask any questions. Be prepared to answer anything that they might ask you on the background of your topic, the process that you went through, or what you learned. Be formal when you do this, because this is still part of your project.

This is your chance to end with a BANG! It should be one or two sentences, and should start with the phrase, “Let me leave you with this...” or something similar. At this point, you can talk about the future of your topic, include relevant figures, or reveal a shocking fact that illustrates the importance of this topic.