What Makes A Great Presentation

(Senior Project)
By Cara Coad
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PREFACE

My idea for my senior project came from a school assembly where the ninth grade was

up on the stage and doing a class project. It was called the “Shark Tank Project”. Groups of

students would go up and pitch his or her made-up business to real business owners (who were to

grade them). I watched all of those that went up on stage that day, and I was offended by the

poor quality of the ​presentation​ of the projects. There were emojis, gifs, and bright colored text

used in the students’ Google Slides - things that do not represent sophistication and

professionalism. This led me to think why ​presentation​ in its many forms was not just as

important or emphasized as projects are at Kihei Charter.

Why should the students even take presentation seriously? Why should they care to speak

clearly, dress nicely, and make aesthetic, and eye-pleasing boards and slides? It made sense

when I applied some of these aspects to real life situations. When attending a job interview, the

first impression is so important. Would you wear ripped jeans, converse, and a graphic-T or a

wrinkle free collared shirt, dress shoes, and dress pants? The latter would be the best choice,

along with proper hygiene management, grooming, and a ready-to-work attitude. The main goal

of even attending an interview is to leave a good impression and get hired. Who will take you

seriously if you don’t look like you’re putting in the effort? This project will get Kihei Charter’s

students ​work ready​.

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INTRODUCTION

Driving Question:

How can I create a public speaking and presentation class to better prepare ninth and eleventh

grades at Kihei Charter High School?

Project Goal:

The end goal of my project is to set up Kihei Charter’s ninth and eleventh grades with life tools

that are expected of them in working adult life. Students should feel more confident when giving

a presentation, know how to dress professionally, use better techniques for building physical

presentations. Types of presentation platforms to use presentation techniques on would be

Google Slides, tri-fold boards, etc. At the end of this project there should be drastic improvement

in being ready to talk audibly to a group of peers, practice of professional dress-wear, and

improvement in confidence. This project will set up students to be professional and lead a way

for our school to be polished. I hope to bring a new and important feature to Kihei Charter that

will further grow students.

Key Content:

This project covers public speaking, educating, communication, presentation attire, and class

tutorials. I’ve gathered resources on how public speaking and communication skills are very

important in the business world and private social life. These resources and references are very

important to my project. I will use my own skills and knowledge to educate and nurture the ninth

and eleventh grades. Classes I will be helping out with will have access to me for help and
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review of their ​presentation​ before turning it in for a grade. Students will be able to contact me

through e-mail and see me during class time when I am scheduled to be there.

21st Century Skills:

[Thinking & Problem Solving]

This project helps put more emphasis on presentation skills within Kihei Charter. Kihei Charter

is a project-based school, but projects come with presentations, and presentations haven’t been

viewed as important as projects are. Whether its a project presentation, an interview, an

important meeting, all aspects of presentation should be valued as they can lead our youth to

great opportunities and success. I can help out the ninth grade English classes and eleventh

grade junior projects/junior seminar by preparing them with valuable life tools.

[Civic Literacy & Engagement]

With this project, students will participate in mini class activities that get each other to interact

and ask questions. Such questions should relate to the topic of presentation. Ex. ​How does

presentation and communication skills relate to my dream job?​ These are the kind of questions

students will have to think about.

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[Communication]

During the actual senior project I will be actively talking with students, teachers, and staff. I will

be emailing fellow classmates and coming to help out some classrooms upon approval of

teachers. Students will send their Google slides to me so I may make some helpful comments

and pointers to improve their work. I will be working with teachers to help get students

comfortable with presenting and public-speaking.

[Financial & Business Literacy]

Luckily my project doesn’t have money needs, and if there were - I’d buy a notebook to write

down lesson plans and scripts that would best work with the classes I’m helping. However, with

this project, students will learn how important communication, public-speaking, and

presentations skills are and how it will benefit them in business, and personal life.

[Global Awareness]

The main objective of my senior project is to improve the abilities of our students in presentation

and communication. The newer generations do not understand the seriousness of professionalism

and if they keep up the entitled mindset that they could do whatever they want - I see them

having a hard time coming to terms of being an adult. With this project the ninth and eleventh

graders will have the knowledge and skills I have learned and hopefully pay it forward.
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[Interpersonal]

Class activities will have classmates work with each other to improve speech and volume. I will

have to go around to the students and ask them if they need any help, and get some one-on-one

help sessions with them.

[Self-Direction]

I will have to come up with an array of activities that stretch the boundaries of students’

confidence. This project will require to keep in touch with my teachers who want me to help

their class.

[Information]

Using all the resources, references, and my own knowledge - I will have the necessary

equipment to complete this project.

Limitations:

The kind of limitations I expect from this kind of project would be unwilling students. I

wouldn’t be surprised if what I had to say went through one ear and out the other. I also expect

that I will be very busy, and I might even have to cut down the workload of my project just to

take care of myself. I’ll need to prioritize time management a lot more once the project starts

going. Some other limitations I expect would be my own health getting in the way of making
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time for my project and other classes. I will have to prioritize which assignments need to be done

more than the other.

Methodology:

For my final product of this presentation I would initially like to interview some teachers on

video. I would have them talk about whether they liked my project idea and if there was any

improvement within the classroom. I will be taking photos of all the work that’s been done and

hope I may be able to catch some footage of the students I help mentor once they start doing

presentations as well.

Components To A Great Presentation: An Annotated Bibliography

MAIN QUESTION:

How can I create a public speaking and presentation class to better prepare ninth and tenth grades at Kihei

Charter High School?

DRIVING QUESTION:

Is communication and presentation beneficial to high school students/Kihei Charter students?

Fletcher, Ben C. “What Your Clothes Might Be Saying About You.” ​Psychology Today,

Sussex Publishers. 20 April. 2013.

In the blog “What Your Clothes Might Be Saying About You.” by Ben C. Fletcher, he talks about

the impression peers will have from clothes people wear. The sub-title of the blog goes, “First

impressions
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are often more significant than you might think….” Fletcher, who is a professor and has experience with

psychological assessment, behavioral psychology, psychological testing and more wrote in the blog post

of research with over three-hundred adults of both men and women. Fletcher explains, “We carried out

the research with over 300 adults (men and women). They looked at images of a man and woman for just

3 seconds before making ‘snap-judgements’ about them. In some of the pictures the man wore a

made-to-measure suit. In others he wore a very similar off-the-peg suit bought on the high street. The

differences in the suits were very minor - we controlled for all the big differences such as color and fabric,

as well as making sure the face of the model was pixelated so that there could be no hidden messages in

the facial expressions.” People rated the man in the tailored-made suit as more confident, successful,

flexible and a higher earner than the high street counterpart. Remember, the facial expressions of the

models were blurred out and so the judgements were made more by looking at the clothes.

This research proves and backs up my opinion of why people, and why students as well, should

pay close attention to the way he or she dresses.

Malloy, John T. “Dress for Success” ​Warner Books,​ 1975.

John T. Malloy wrote several books on the topic of dressing powerfully and for success. His

book, ​Dress for Success,​ talks about how a person’s clothing can affect their private and professional life.

With his follow up book, ​Women’s Dress for Success,​ John says it is the most important written book

about women’s clothes because of it being based on scientific research and not his opinion. John T.

Malloy who is a writer has conducted research for several big corporations and has done training seminars

for them too.

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Manecke, Kirt. “Social Skills for Teenagers: Smile & Succeed For Teens book.”

​ ouTube, 12 Dec. 2014.

SolidPressBooks, Y

This is by far the best source I have found. Kirt Manecke who wrote the book ​Smile & Succeed

For Teens​ comes to a school and asks the tweens and teens in a classroom important social questions. He

goes on to describing certain social actions and events and asks the students why some actions are

appropriate/professional or the complete opposite. The kids ask amazing and real questions, and Kirt has a

response to each of them. I plan on coming back to this video, and referring to his book once I order it.

Megan Terry. Personal Interview. 14 Sep 2018.

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Michael Stubbs. Personal Interview. 21 Sep 2018.

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Rowh, Mark. Degree In Sight: First Impressions Count. American Psychological

Association​​. gradPSYCH Magazine.

This page from the American Psychological Association goes into the best detail of first

impressions and the psychological aspects to getting your point across via dressing appropriately and

reminding people of the basics in which you as a person gain respect from your peers. I will definitely

come back to this published page to refer to the main components of my research.
Tara Lindsey. Personal Interview. 14 Sep 2018.

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Ms. Lindsey is an Academic Dean, Test Coordinator, and a Junior Advisor. “I guess

teaching is a lot like public speaking, and it doesn’t feel like that and I don’t know why. It’s like

there is a sense of control as a teacher and there is a role expectation which makes it not so nerve

wracking. But in my job, personally I’ve had to give presentations - parent night, when going

into advisories and talking about running start or award ceremonies….” I chose Ms. Lindsey as

one of my personal sources because of her background in public speaking, communications, etc.

As a student I’ve depended on her and have really come to like the way she works.
Resources

For resources I will need to make lesson plans, and have some classmates help with a classroom

interactive activity. I will also have to work with teachers at the new Kihei Charter building for

integrating my project and help during his or her class time. I will also have to talk to teachers

and see what they would like me to help with, in regards with aspects of my project. I also have

video editing software I bought for last year’s project assignments. Other resources like my

argumentative essay and the books and sites that have nuggets of information in them will help

my project. I have two books coming in the mail to assist me in the classroom:

Smile & Succeed for Teens: A Crash Course in Face-to-Face Communication

Manecke, Kirt

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This book pretty much covers the entire reasoning behind my project. Even after watching a thirty

to forty-five minute video of the author talking to a classroom of middle school students helped me for how

I should go about my project.

4 Essential Keys to Effective Communication in Love, Life, Work--Anywhere!: Including the "12-Day

Communication Challenge!"

Leal III, Bento C.

Budget/Expenses

-Gas money

(Once I have my driver’s license.)

-Printer Ink

-Time

My project has little to no expenses, and actual costs of equipment is not that high.

Timeline

Q1W1
-Intro
Q1W2
-Timelines
Q1W3
-Proposals
-​Aug. 16th 2018
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Project Proposal Title Page (Done)

Project Proposal Preface (Done)

Researched Topics On Communication, First-Impressions, Public-Speaking, etc. (Done)

Q1W4
-​Aug. 31st 2018
Project Proposal Introduction (Done)
 Researched Topics On Communication, First-Impressions, Public-Speaking, etc. +

Presentation of Appearance, and hard copy of presentation. (Done)

-Annotated bibliographies
-Research
-Driving questions

Q1W5
-Pitches
-Conferences
Q1W6
-​Sep. 14th 2018
Emailed Christine for Proposal Help (Done)

Screenshots of Faculty/Expert Interviews (Done)

Grade Check Sent (Done)

Conducted 1 Expert Interview (Done)

Conducted 1 Faculty Interview (Done)

-Revisions
-More conferences
Q1W7
-More Revisions
-More conferences
-​Sep. 20th 2018
Put together the last pieces of Project Proposal Draft (Done)

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Q1W8
-Final proposals
-Pitches
Q1W9
-Final proposals
-Pitches

Q2W1
-Arg essay
-Blog progress
Q2W2
-Arg essay
-Blog progress
Q2W3
-Arg essay
-Blog progress
Q2W4
-Arg essay
-Blog progress
Q2W5
-Arg essay
-Blog progress
Q2W6
-Thanksgiving
-​Q2W7
-Arg essay DUE
-Blog progress
-Progress presentation in class
-Conferences
Q2W8
-Blog progress
-Progress presentation in class
-Conferences
Q2W9
-Blog progress
-Progress presentation in class
-Conferences
Q2W10
-Blog progress
-Progress presentation in class
-Conferences
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Q3W1
-Blog progress
Q3W2
-Blog progress
Q3W3
-Blog progress
Q3W4
-Blog progress
Q3W5
-Blog progress
Q3W6
-Conferences
-Formal presentations
Q3W7
-Conferences
-Formal presentations
Q3W8
-Conferences
-Formal presentations
Q3W9
-Formal presentations
Q3W10
-Formal presentations

Q4W1
-Prepping senior grad defense
-Trifolds
Q4W2
-Prepping senior grad defense
-Trifolds
Q4W3
-Prepping senior grad defense
-Trifolds
Q4W4
-No school Friday
Q4W5

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-Prepping senior grad defense
-Trifolds
Q4W6
-SENIOR GRAD DEFENSE
Q4W7
-Celebrate
Q4W8
-Senior Exhibitions
Q4W9
-Graduation
Q4W10
Faculty Member Interview
I am scheduled to meet with ________________________________ at ________ on
_____________________ to discuss my senior project idea. I will show them my
proposal and take notes to get new ideas and perspectives on ways to enhance or
improve my project.

Signatures of proof:

__________________________________________ (Student)

__________________________________________ (Faculty)

Date:_____________

NOTES:

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Senior Project Proposal Score Sheet

_____ (5pts) Format (font, page numbers, last name, section headings)
_____ (5pts)Title Page

_____ (20 pts) Preface

Introduction
____ (5 pts) Driving Question
____ (10 pts) Project Goal
____ (10 pts) Key Content Knowledge
____ (10 pts) 21st Century Skills
____ (5 pts) Limitations
____ (10 pts) Methodology

Annotated Bibliography
____ (10 pts)

Resources and Timeline of Events

____ (10 pts) Resources Needed
____ (20 pts) Timeline

_______ (120 points)Total