Comments on: 10 Steps to Outstanding Student Presentations

By: Lori Bourne

Lori Bourne — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:28:59 +0000

I love that kids can choose any topic they’re interested in – that’s the best part! The fact that they’re interested in it makes the research & work fun.

Your daughter’s presentation sounds great – I hope she does well!

By: claudeabgood

claudeabgood — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:52:00 +0000

This posts comes at a great time for me, my daughter has a presentation coming up for our homeschool group and I was worried about the extent of what I remembered goes onto the display board. My daughter is six and in LOVE with dinosaurs (which she has been for several years now). So She’s pulling out her dino collection to show off at the science fair. I decided to bring some sort of display board so that it won’t turn out to be an elaborate play session for her:) Oh yeah….she will also have to wear a dress for the second time in 10 months whoohooo!!!

By: montessori_lori

montessori_lori — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:00:00 +0000

This is a great comment, because you've hit on the hardest part of a presentation: having the child do the research. I plan on writing a whole post about research in the Montessori classroom sometime soon, but for now I'll say this:

Many times, children do end up copying word for word from books. This is obviously not the ideal situation; in fact, of course, it's plagarism. I also encouraged kids to re-state things in their own words and combine research from more than one source.

I love your idea of flagging pages with post-it notes - that's great! The bottom line is, younger children (1st and 2nd grade) are going to need help to re-state information and organize it. There's really no way around that.

However, if they've received guidance for a few years and understand the process, then by third grade they should be able to complete research mostly on their own.

Yes, it's very helpful to create an outline. I didn't have kids write down their source materials in any sort of bibleography format, but we did make a list of books and websites they used.

When I write the post about research in the Montessori classroom, I'll edit this post to include a link to that one. Thanks!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:00:00 +0000

I am sorry that no one has responded to this posting up to this point. I am happy to be the first!

I am wondering if you would be willing to elaborate on the researching phase of this process. Once the student has selected a topic, I often ask him or her to identify some specific research questions. This helps the student to look for specific information rather than copying passages from books. Even then, I am not sure what is the best way to have students record the pertinent information. I experimented with many different approaches, including using post-it notes to flag pertinent facts in books, recording facts on note cards (which can then be rearranged into a logical order), etc. My biggest challenge is ensuring that students paraphrase rather than copy from books. Have you found a method that works well for you?

Also, do you have your students create an outline? At the 6-9 level, do you ask students to keep track of their source materials?

Thanks (in advance) for your input!