Consolidation and Reflection

The students have now got as far as presenting to their parents and guardians, to the wider school community, to other classes in other schools and maybe to local organisations or politicians. As before, our students have been there, they have shared their projects far and wide. They have been empowered to do this by their teachers and by each other.

In many instances, they worried and fretted about whether they could do it or not, they practised and practised, they learnt their lines. Their confidence soared and they realised that they were making a difference. At this stage, you have hopefully got your students into that position and through their final stage of presenting and sharing.

In this final element of your training modules, we are asking you to reflect on the sharing experiences. As with the final part of each of our modules, we want you to think back to our CEPNET principles and see how they are playing out through this phase of work. So once again, for your own learning, take each of these and consider to what extant the work on sharing and presenting findings has contributed to our learning objectives.

• VOICE: how have you managed to ensure that the children were taking the lead as they developed their presentations and showcased their work?
• DEBATE: Did they manage to continue their debates and discussions as they were finalising their projects?
• ANALYSIS: As they focused on their main research messages and how they were going to communicate with an audience, did they get a chance to show some further critical thinking?
• WORLDVIEW: They were really being thrown into a level of engagement with the wider world as they had to stand up and present, how did they cope with this aspect? How did you provide assistance?
• ACTION: Again, this final phase of CEPNET is all about active learning and seeing action as an outcome of the learning. You had primed the students for action through the earlier phases. How did they take to the stage?

These are the key assessment concerns that we felt you should consider, knowing that you have followed the tasks and activities.

Here is one final video to see how a showcase event was undertaken in one of our schools. This event allowed each of the project groups to have a first go at presenting their work. They had prepared presentations and as well as talking about their findings and learning, they also took questions from their peers. As in any normal school event, involving up to 100 students, there is a lot of coming and going, but have a look and see how it might have compared to your endeavours. The video remains unedited, so it’s all there for you to review, warts and all.