How do you develop presentation skills?

The following article takes ideas and discussions shared from the Facebook Group FLL: Share & Learn .

Practice in front of adults:

Practice in front of parents and coaches. Get their feedback.

Practice every day:

At the end of every meeting they get a prompt and present (usually solo or pairs for 1-2 minutes).

Invite an expert:

The speech pathologist at my school helped us out. She watched their presentation and gave feedback a few times.

Practice with teammates:

The kids broke off in pairs and tried to “stump” each other with new questions related to the area they were in charge of. The two youngest members even came up with something completely missed by their experienced teammates. They had to research to find the answer and shared it with the team. It even came up in judging and oh were those two proud they knew it and their teammates were proud of them and complimented them afterwards!

Make it a game:

We play a game to help teach kids that the way they speak creates meaning to the words they present. They LOVE it- from Challenge to Explore! I created emotion cards- from hopeful and cheerful to angry and frustrated. I create one sentence that the kids say according to their emotion card. It’s a lot like charades! This made a HUGE difference in their delivery and confidence!

Create scripts:

We practiced and created scripts. They did them as a team first. Then in front of parents and friends. And lastly we did a mock competition, where I brought in people they didn’t know to present in front of.

Try not to memorize

With my teams, team members are never required to memorize their portions of the presentation. It’s great if they can. But it’s a timed event where it’s more important to relay the information than to have a 100% polished performance. That said, team members are expected to not read their presentations. I suggest they bring a card with notes, important points, important words, etc on them. Whatever works for them. Most end up with the entire printed script with their parts highlighted. Not the best, but as long as they’re not reading every word and not fidgeting with the paper I don’t worry too much. Public speaking is hard and scary and even more so when it’s a team thing and its timed. Practice is what makes it easier.

Practice in pairs, in the mirror, etc.

I encourage team members to practice their presentation parts multiple times, out loud, ideally in front of a mirror (so they can see that they’re making eye contact rather than looking at the paper). I also encourage them to practice their presentations with others’ help reading the other team member’s parts, so they can get used to what comes before and after. And I suggest they set up some sort of audience. That could be siblings, pets, stuffed animals, whatever they have.