Susan J. JonesSEARCH SUSAN J. JONESSusan J Jones

STRATEGIES AND TIPS

Tips for Trainers, Presenters, and Public Speakers Checklist for Winning them Over

The Top 7 Secrets for Success

• Let your personality show. Be real.
• Never work to impress anyone.
• Work to give to everyone.
• Recognize and credit the work of others. Often.
• Showcase knowledge with personal stories and struggles, not with your resume (no one likes a braggart).
• Invite and welcome participants’ ideas; value their examples.
• Prove that your message makes their life easier.
• Let people enjoy themselves.

More Secrets for the Savvy Presenter

• Speak casually and friendly with audience members – before, during and after a training segment.
• Be approachable!
• Make eye contact as you speak.
• Be positive. Smile.
• Demonstrate a sense of humor. Laugh!
• Never laugh at your audience.
• Laugh with your audience.
• Show respect for the spirit of an idea with which you disagree
• Keep the tone of communication with individuals light-hearted and good natured
• Disagree with a smile – never be cynical, sarcastic, or pointed.

The 8 Signals that You’re in Trouble -
When Participants

• Keep their backs toward you after delivery begins
• Exhibit negative body language: i.e., cross arms, roll eyes, hand wave with fewer than 5 fingers.
• Disappear!
• Walk out on a presentation without explanation
• Return from breaks slowly, reluctantly
• Fail to lean or look toward you as you present
• Respond slowly or sluggishly to directions or requests

STRATEGIES AND TIPS

Tips for Educators

Learning & Teaching Strategies

• The brain learns from its environment. Enrich the learning environment.
• Teach pattern recognition. Often.
• Provide open-ended tasks, those that have multiple correct answers, when possible. Don’t always tell learners “how” to do it. Tell them what to do, and let them synthesize and problem solve.
• One’s personal, emotional state greatly influences what is recalled during a learning episode. Deal with emotional influences in your classroom before teaching.
• Research suggests that neurons need some downtime to consolidate information. Teach new information over time, providing periodic review.
• Prime the brain for learning. Provide visual outlines, have students skim the chapter before beginning class, or show select pictures representing different parts of the upcoming lecture.
The % of information remembered increases as the learning episode shortens and decreases as the lesson time lengthens.
Give the brain time to process verbal information. Pause 3 — 7 seconds between important statements.
• Elaborate every 3 — 5 minutes for better retention. Elaborate rehearsal engages the frontal lobes, involving higher order thinking.
• Following a lesson, have students create their own self-generated title for the day’s lesson or lecture notes.
• Change the type of instruction or student activity no more than •every 20 minutes.
• Provide meaningful challenge with reasonable chances of success.
• Teach students how to ask great questions while they are reading.
• Wait 5 seconds after asking a factual question and 10 seconds after asking a complex question.
• Periodically, ask students to record 3 things they learned from the lesson or 3 things they found interesting. Rehearsal is essential for planting memory.
• Students should highlight their notes as a form of review in class. Review time should be completely quiet.
• Be informative with your feedback. Be extremely specific with your comments. What needs to be retried? What is strong? Consider using icons, words, symbols, or pre-determined marks to communicate on written work.
• Present/discover, rehearse, apply, then review.
• After a lesson, have students record the most interesting part and state why.
• Develop concept before content.
• Take 2 answers to every question.
• Teach by asking questions.
• Reveal one point at a time.

The Learning First Alliance Action Plan for Mathematics, developing guides for educators fully founded on research, recognizes that mathematics must be taught from the earliest grades, enabling students to reason logically and develop skills for real life. Mathematics should “…help…them understand how the world works…” To that end, the very young student needs the mysteries and intrigue of their world of play to unfold abstract mathematical concepts and bring clear understanding of concepts to the child.

Out of Phi Delta Kappan (April 2002, p. 606-611, “Dear Verity, Now I’m Getting Into Shape!” By Deirdre Dempsey and John Marshall) comes a tip full of promise for laying foundations for geometry in young students. The article uses a narrative to describe a dynamite discovery approach to understanding of both 3D and 2D geometric shapes for youngsters. Using wooden, colorful building blocks, children examine and identify characteristics of 3 Dimensional shapes, such as rectangular prisms or cylinders. They sort them, identify features, and then are asked to find each shape in their own world. The extension of this is to use the shapes to create “footprints,” or flat surfaces that can be inked and used as stamps to create designs on paper. Children then, through concrete real-life experiences, understand 2 dimensional shapes and their relationship to a 3D world: to their own world. This is a great way to lay foundations for understanding mathematical concepts regarding geometry, to help students transition easily into the in-depth study of geometry. In a traditional approach, which introduces labels and facts years later in a rote memory fashion, students often learn procedurally and with great apprehension.

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Research shows that fear can cause the brain to become inefficient in planting and retrieving memory. From the work of Caine and Caine to the words of Bob Sylwester, educators have learned that positive environments foster active participation, so necessary for real learning. Students of all ages share two basic fears, however, that hinder participation: fear of failure and fear of peer disapproval. Classroom tasks that demand risk-filled public participation or demand individuals to generate ideas may create stress. Yet students must participate and produce to learn! Want a fast, sure-fire way to increase student participation and involvement? Try this:

Require students to write responses on scrap paper to all oral prompts you give them before anyone in the class is allowed to respond. This a variation on the old “wait time” technique we have used for years. After a moment, instruct students to turn to a neighbor and compare ideas – and then come to consensus on the single best response. When the full classroom discussion ensues, every single student will have ideas to share (whether or not the idea originated in their mind is unimportant: they have been actively involved in processing the idea) so they will not be a failure. Their answer, regardless of whether it is the best or the worst of the class, will not be given in isolation – at least one other person in the class agrees with it. You have eliminated fear of peer disapproval!

The benefits? They are many. Little time is lost in the process, as students are given only a very brief time to work. The loss of seconds is made up in quality discussion. The teacher is safe to call on any student in the class when using this technique – for no one can say “I dunno.” Participation will increase, safety will be present, and you may have the best participation ever for whole-class discussions! Repetitive use of the technique makes it a positive classroom ritual.

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Research shows that icons and visual representations of ideas are easier for the brain to process for meaning than are abstract symbols, like numbers or written language. For this reason, symbols (and not words) are used on traffic signs to warn of upcoming pedestrian walkways, and tiny icons appear on automobile switches to aid a driver in turning on wind shield wipers. An icon or symbol can represent a large, complex concept as well as a simple one, activating entire memory networks surrounding the meaning or understanding of the concept. But how does a teacher use this knowledge in a classroom –using icons to help plant or remember concepts - to make learning easier for every student?

After a unit of study is completely over (assessment and all), take an extra few minutes before moving onto the next topic. Have students identify their choice of the most important skills or ideas they have learned: perhaps one or two key concepts (you set the limit) from the unit just completed. Ask the class to come to consensus on those, through a jig-sawing procedure or a vote on student/small group generated suggestions. After reaching a consensus, the one or two items chosen become the Key Learning, which will be represented by a class-produced icon (or by a special art committee whose members rotate over time). No written words are allowed on the icon, only symbols or single letter/numbers in combination with symbols. After it is produced, it is explained and its meaning demonstrated to the teacher and the whole class.

Place the icon high on the wall, just below the ceiling line where kids’ eyes will periodically scan. It will serve as a visual review each time the students look at it. Repeat this icon-producing “ritual” after each unit of study, and by the end of the school year, you will have a visual representation of the ideas kids believe to be key learnings! A pretty impressive representation of concepts the students have learned and recognized as significant; doubly effective if they drive an impromptu review on days when there are 3 minutes before the bell rings, or 45 seconds before recess and the teacher says, “Hey, kids – do you remember? What does this mean?” And pointing to each icon quickly, kids chorale responses. Identifying the meaning of icons can build energy while serving as a review, a ritual, and a darned good way to reinforce key ideas . . . over and over again.

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