Oral Presentation

TASK OPTIONS

You have three options for your oral text. You can be creative with both of these options and if you have something you want to change about the task, just check in with your teacher. 

Task 1 - Tell a story using your writing from the first writing portfolio piece

Bring your short story or personal essay to life in a performance or podcast.  Think about: What mood/atmosphere do you want to convey? How do you want the audience to feel listening to/watching it? How will you bring the various voices in your story to life?

Task 2 - Choose your favourite genre and tell us about it. 

Think about: Where does this genre come from (time, place..etc.)? What is the history of the genre and how has it changed? How do stories in this genre often get told? What tropes or techniques do they use? What are some examples of it and how do they fit the genre?  What does this genre tell us about society? How has it been used to comment on society?

Task 3 - Tell the origin story of an object or place.

Think carefully about which object/place you choose and why it might be relevant or interesting to your audience.  You could tell this from the point of view of the object/place, or as yourself, or as a third party narrator.  

Think about: What is interesting or surprising about this object/place? How has it changed or impacted history or daily life? What can we learn from this origin story? What do you want audiences to think or feel at the end of your presentation?

Presentation techniques

Your teacher is marking you based on both your content AND your presentation techniques. 

Depending on which task you choose, you will need to think about what presentation techniques you have at your disposal and how best to utilise your voice, your visuals and maybe even your face and body. 

Sound only (podcast)

If all we have is sound, you need to make sure you are thinking about your voice. See Mr Rothshank's video below for vocal expression. We also need to think about sound effects and music and how it helps support the mood and atmosphere of the story. 

Voice and visuals 

If you are producing a Loom/video essay with just your voice and a visual presentation, again you need to think about your vocal expression. You also need to think about how effective your presentation is. This means not including an entire slide of just words! 

Voice, camera and visuals

If you choose to create a Loom with your face in the corner, awesome! It means you need to think about things like eye contact and facial expression. If you can't handle eye contact with the camera, you might be better off to turn the camera off and just use your voice. BUT if you are comfortable with it, it gives you another range of techniques to help engage your audience. 

In-person presentation

If you are super brave, and decide to give a presentation in class. You have additional tools at your disposal with body language and movement around the space. 

If you decide to present in person, AMAZING! Make sure you know your speech well. You don't want to be reading the whole speech, you need lots of eye contact and not stumbling over where you are in the script.