Secret to Fixing BAD Classroom Presentations!

I have written before about my use of medical case studies as entry points to inquiry cycles in my Biology class. Although a powerful way of forcing awareness of an information gap on various topics and bringing, "real life" problem solving to the classroom, this process also forces students to confront their fear of public speaking and ability to create a concise, clear, and engaging presentation to their peers. 

In the past I leveraged student presentations sparingly. Here and there when it was appropriate to share but nothing that formal. Medical case study diagnosis in Biology has forced me to think about the how I how I train students to give good presentations. I LOVE my students, but man...sometimes sitting through a challenging presentation full of overused animations and bullet points [God forbid Comic Sans] can be painful. 

Enter "Death by PowerPoint" by Comedian Don McMillian (see below). I stumbled across Don's incredible comedy sketch accidentally and found myself laughing hysterically! Then it hit me...Don's presentation was the RUBRIC I WAS LOOKING FOR! Simple, clear, and a fun way to share my expectations with students before class presentations in a way that wasn't me yapping at them about what a bad presentation looks like. 

I took it one step further and converted Don's bit into a "Dead or Alive" scoring Rubric. Click here for your copy! 

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