Presenting and Sharing Results

Your preparation work should have got you to sketch out the possibilities and the practicalities associated with hosting a CEPNET event for your school. You will also have maybe returned to the earlier modules and reflected on the CEPNET rationale of placing your students at the centre of the decision-making process, as during this final phase, there may well be temptations in your path of taking back control…

The following steps are laid out in this part of Module 3, leading from the initial organising of the event, through to the event itself and the children’s presentation work. As with all our training modules, we have a range of videos and activities that will help to guide you through.

• getting the event organised
• making sure that the groups have their messaging clear
• finalising and practising the presentations
• being ready for showtime…

As with all other modules, we have tips and ideas for you for your Phase 3 work. There are the usual lesson plans and classroom resources, as well as videos from our teachers. At this stage, it is also useful to have a look at previous presentations with the class to get them motivated and aware that what they have to say is so very important…

Start here with one of our teachers setting the scene.

1. Organising the showcase or celebratory event.

By now, your project groups have decided on how they are going to present their findings. They should be going beyond thinking about the potential audiences with whom they wish to share their findings to the planning and organising of the event, whether this be an internal school showcase or a celebratory event involving the wider school and local community.

Our teachers give some direction based on their experience of getting the children involved in the planning work.

2. Articulating the Project findings

The CEPNET sessions will now be mostly focused on helping to shape the research findings into a presentation format. Groups may make use of a wide array of approaches. The one common thread will be that they are going to be facing their peers and other members of the school community and presenting their learning. This means that they will have to concentrate and work on these practical communication skills as required in presenting to a wider audience.

During these sessions, you need to make sure that they are looking at these themes and using the skills developed over the course of the project to date:

• Groupwork- are they listening to and helping each other? It is important the more vocal members of the group do not dominate the presentation. All group members should be equally involved.
• Creativity- how are they using their artistic brains to communicate their message- art, music can be used effectively at this stage. But make sure that they are realistic. Trying to re-paint and build a new model the day before the event will probably not be manageable.
• Using their IT skills- there may be some concentration needed by the group as they work together on the final set of slides for their presentation if that’s the way they decide to go. They might need some support on this, but encourage the group to share out the tasks. If possible, get them to go back to their project plan and update it to include these specific presentation tasks
• Communication skills- getting across their messages of change and hope, based on their interpretation of the SDGs and the associated research findings, will require some clever and persuasive presenting work. Let them present their individual slides to each other and get feedback on how they improve each element.
• Giving value to diversity- it’s no harm to remind the class of the initial CEPNET values and the importance of inclusion and diversity within their messaging. Every member of the group should be fully involved in the presentation of their work. In some instances, we found that the more vocal member of the group took on all the presenting and the others took a step or two back. Keep an eye out for this potential as it may not be intended to exclude anyone, but the final effect can look that way.
• Opportunities to experiment- if you are lucky in your classroom, you might have exciting ICT possibilities such as green screen technology. Where possible, encourage the students to be adventurous and use all options.

If you need any inspiration, take a look at this video of some children presenting their CEPNET work.

These students managed to address all of these competences and skills listed here, including making use of green screen technology to excellent effect.

Get your students to have a look at some of the finished presentations and any associated artefacts so that they can get some ideas and inspiration. There are more available in the Student Project archive section of the site.

3. Practising the presentations

The students will possibly need some support in working through their presentations. They may end up with different versions of their presentation. You may want to have an initial run through within the class. This can give them a chance to practise who will be saying what, look at the sequencing and let them hear what it sounds like.

Before they get to this point, let them consider the following checklist:

• Who is it for?
• What do they need to hear?
• What are the main points to get over?
• How are you going to communicate it?

The following document can be used to help with this aspect of their work on presentation skills. Our teachers produced this after working with the groups and realising that some groups might need a little more structure than others. Let your groups take this template and work on it in the lead up to the first presentation practice session.

You can always check in with them at this stage and see if they want to give you a sneak preview. You can encourage this idea with any of the groups that might be a little behind schedule, as you might be able to give them some “light direction” to get them over the line.

4. Making sure that everything is in place for Showcase

Now that we are getting close to the event, it is a good idea to have a plan of action that will work backwards from the moment that the audience and guests will arrive. So working backwards, you want to ensure that the students have adequate time to work on and finalise the chosen artefacts. If they have build models or developed a song or artwork, is it ready to go? how will it be brought to the venue? have you tested the wifi or the laptop with the projector? Again, these are typical event management organisational aspects. But the more that you have created these as a checklist, the less chance there is that you will miss something.

So in these final CEPNET sessions with your class, make use of the lesson plans. As ever, these are your friend in need… remember that over 40 teachers have been using these plans to guide their work and they have been updated and tweaked on the basis of their feedback. The session guides are also really useful in giving you a ready made agenda and set of slides for each CEPNET session.

As above, these last few sessions are all about the practice, the easing of nerves and ensuring that there are plenty of the relevant resources in place to finish off the model, go over the powerpoint again and again, walk through the lines for the drama, rehearse the song and the dance moves, make sure that podcast is online and all the other range of last minute issues. Planning and more planning, testing and more testing, rehearsing and more rehearsing…

The showcase event will all of a sudden be happening and the ultimate sharing of all CEPNET results will be upon you. Yes, you can be sure that there will be plenty of nerves and that might just be you as the proud teacher…

You will possibly be saying a few words about the project and the experience of working with the students on this project. Please make sure to focus on the most important aspects. While the presentations will no doubt be wonderful and everything will go to plan and the audience will be wowed by the children, the key message should be about the fact that the children were in charge, the focus of this project was to empower them to have a voice about their planet, their community and their school life. This will be clear from the work that they produce and their presentations.

Their creativity will be clear to all, as will their self confidence with their messages and their desire to be active participants in responding to the climate emergency. Take for example these students. When their work was presented to the showcase event, there was an extraordinary response from the audience.

As you prepare for this final piece of the CEPNET jigsaw, once again take it from our teachers that the sharing of the work gives the overall project a perfect ending. The students have learned a huge amount, they have developed new skills and competences, the teachers have discovered new ways of getting the students engaged and involved in their learning and the school community has benefited by an increased level of awareness of the climate emergency and a renewed commitment to sustainability.