Over the last week, my AVID students have been developing and presenting on a college/university of their choice.  It’s always a great project for our new AVID students because it introduces them to a college and requires them to present in front of an audience.  Yet, when it comes to these presentations, I have noticed two areas where improvement is needed:

1. Students presenters need to improve their presentation skills in front of a large audience.
2. The student audience needs to find a way to become engaged in the presentation.

In relation to the first area of improvement, I believe that it is completely normal for our new, 7th grade students to struggle with presentations.  Presenting is not easy – even for adults!  However, I wanted to find a way to offer a variety of feedback and advice to our student presenters to support them in future presentations.  In the second area of improvement, I can see that it is a struggle for students stay engaged while other students are delivering presentations that may not be interesting to them.  So, I started to think about how I could engage and empower our student audience by allowing them to give peer feedback to the student presenter.

If my student presenters needed feedback, then the student audience could be an excellent source of peer feedback.  The student presenter could receive 30+ different ideas and strategies for future presentations.  In addition to this, it would keep our student audience engaged and challenge them to find the strengths and weaknesses in other presentations.  This, in turn, would also support these students in further refining their own presentations.

So, I developed the “Presentation Feedback Form” on Google Forms.

Click HERE to make your own copy.

The “Presentation Feedback Form” is very simple.  It needed to be quick and to the point so that the presentation process could continue to move at a timely and efficient pace.  Through this feedback form, I wanted students to:

1. Share something they learned.
2. Share an area of strength for the presentation.
3. Share an area of improvement for the presentation.

Once students filled out the form, they would submit their feedback and it would be automatically emailed to the student by using FormMule.  This is probably my favorite part of the process!  No need for tons of paper copies!  Instead, simply use FormMule to set up the students personalized feedback that they can review the minute their presentation is complete.  If you’re unsure how to set up FormMule, I have created a short video below that will walk you through the steps.

I was pleasantly surprised with how much my students enjoyed giving and receiving feedback on their presentations.  I allowed students the opportunity to receive feedback and, if they did not want it, I did not require it.  I wanted students to feel comfortable presenting.  However, I noticed that nearly all of the students wanted the feedback once they saw all the feedback emails that their peers were receiving.  Several students mentioned how they knew exactly how they were going to improve their presentations in the future – and they were excited about it!

Feel free to use the form above and modify for your own students.  I would love to hear some feedback in the comments below – especially if you try this out with your own students!