This weekend I have been planning my Tesol Greece presentation. I have almost finished making my PowerPoint Presentation and I thought I would share with you one of the things I did during my planning stage.
Post-it Presentation
I teach presentation skills and when I teach them, I always read tips and helpful ideas on how to make a good presentation. One of the tips was to write what you would put on your slides on Post-it notes. Why?
Well,
- If it fits on a Post-it and you can read it, it will look good on your slide.
- You get to organize your slides/ideas based on your Post-it slides.
- It’s a visual representation of your presentation.
So, that’s what I did. I read, made notes and then started making my Post-it notes. Once all my mixed thoughts were on the post-its, I took a closer look and started figuring out the order in which I would put everything. I did a bit of shuffling, looked at what made sense, and in the end, I was happy with my result. I stuck all my Post-its on a piece of cardboard and placed it write next to my computer screen. I then started making my PPT.
1st stage of Post-it Presentation
FIY
√ It has taken me much less time to think of the info that should go on the slides.
√ My slides are not too wordy.
√ My presentation looks quite good.
Do you have any useful tips for the planning stage of a presentation? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Till next time……
My Elt Rambles 
What a simple yet cool idea! This may well work in other areas, such as lesson planning. Thanks for the tip, Joanna.
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Hi Hana!! It was really cool. I thought, ” Why hadn’t I done this earlier?” So much easier!!!
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This is a great idea, Joanna! It echos something I read recently on Laura Patsko’s amazing blog, when she talks about how she synthesised ideas for her MA thesis: https://laurapatsko.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/wish-id-known-before-my-ma/
So you’re in good company 🙂
Good luck for your presentation!
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Thanks Rachel. I had read about the whole Post-it notes presentation strategy about 3-4 years ago but never really tried it. It works. I am looking at my PPT now and it all seems to make sense!! Thanks for the wishes and the link!! 🙂
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I’m sure you’ll be great!
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It’s one of those ideas which just seems so right and obvious when you actually come across it.
Thanks for this, now I can’t wait for a learner to have to do a presentation!
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Hi Chris,
Honestly, it works!! Try it with your BE sts!!
Thanks for reading and commenting 🙂
Joanna
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Hi Joanna,
I do something very similar, but with squares of scrap paper. I start by figuring out how long I have for the presentation (say 30 minutes), take away 5-10 minutes for questions and answers and general faffing, then half the remaining time. That tells me how many squares of paper I’m allowed, a.k.a. how many slides I can have. So in this example, that would be 10. In the process of putting together the presentation it might creep up to 12 or 13, but never much more than that. Since I started doing this my presentations are much better timed 🙂 although I still sometimes end up rushing a bit at the end.
Sandy
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Hey Sandy!!
I think this time (at TESOL Greece) my presentation was very well-planned. Everything went the way I wanted it to and I think it’s because I used this type of planning method. The funny thing is that while I always tell my students to do it this way, I had never practiced what I preached. Now I did, and I found it very effective!! I also left time for questions (no one asked anything). Your way seems similar, so I am happy to hear it also works for you!!
Thanks for leaving a comment Sandy 🙂
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