Before I became a teacher, my plan was to make documentary movies so I guess you could say that I have always had an interest in media and the power of visuals. Now I can bring more creativity into the classroom to make my presentations more purposeful, engaging and clear.
Several points from “Presentation Zen: An Overview” really stood out for me. I always tell my students to have a “sticky attitude” so they can persevere and enjoy a challenge. Presentation Zen says to “make your ideas sticky.” From the statistics shown in “Presentation Zen: An Overview”, adding a visual can make your ideas even more memorable. Because my mind is detail-oriented, I agree with the statement that “if an image can be designed with fewer elements, then why add more.” Sometimes I feel bombarded with information and choices so that it feels better just having less to focus on, or as Garr Reynolds might say “less noise.” I also believe “empty space is okay.”
This means that I have some clean up work to do on some of my previous PowerPoint lessons. I have been trying to create simpler anchor charts in my classroom too with catchy phrases that my students can remember, such as the verses for regrouping in math that say “If there is more on the floor, go next door and add one more.” (Mailbox Magazine) and simpler anchor charts too. I just remade my posters for the problem solving strategies. Before I had the strategy with a model problem.
Garr wrote, “…Symphony is about utilizing our whole mind — logic, analysis, synthesis, intuition — to make sense of our world (i.e., our topic), finding the big picture and determining what is important and what is not before the day of our talk. It’s also about deciding what matters and letting go of the rest.”
I would like to try and tie together my presentations with a unifying theme to help illuminate how it all connects. This I think would help glue ideas together and cement them in the viewers mind. For example, for my poetry unit, I begin with Georgia Heard’s 5 doors of poetry. Next, we look at how the framework holding up the door might be imagery, music or emotion. I would like to keep adding on with subsequent lessons the idea of poetry being like structures or buildings that come in different shapes and sizes. For example, a list poem is like a tall skyscraper to show the parallelism in the shape of the poem.
