Presentation Practice Part 2 (Sep. 3)

In today's class, we continued our practice presentations in groups and my group had one last presenter so we listened to her and gave her advice. She had quite a few words on each slide and although the repetition within her slides were great, I thought there were a few things that could drastically improve them. For example, she went in depth with her explanation on a disease talked about in her novel. However, since her oral description was very clear and straightforward, I said that the sentences on her slide could totally be cut out. Another thing that was relatively common amongst the presentations I heard, was that they all had the words "one last thing" on their one last thing slide. This was a mistake I made back in first grade and was told to fix by the teacher, so I was glad I was able to apply my mistakes from two years ago to help improve my friends presentation. 

At the beginning of class, before we dove into presentations Mr.Paterson gave us an explanation on JALT and how he was going to choose a few students to go present with him in an online conference next month. I've never given a presentation to people older than myself (except for teachers) so this was exciting news and something I did not anticipate could happen to me for a while. Mr.Paterson announced that the commitee was interested in our book reviews which was unexpected. I thought that they would be more interested in hearing about online learning and how our class adapted and adjusted to this pandemic by incorporating various apps and websites. I feel very passionate about new features and gadgets we were taught and how we got through this weird time in our life. 

I think so many teachers, especially those in Japan are so focused on constantly teaching their students the correct thing which I am very grateful for, but not many teachers have a mind set of learning from their students instead. There are quite a few teachers who are open and willing to learn from their students in this school. One of the things I enjoy and admire about Mr.Paterson's classes is how he is always trying to provide the best learning curriculum or environment for all students by incorporating students' opinions and reflections. He mentioned that students have a lot to say, and it is crucial for him to hear students' opinions, I feel inspired to write my blogs more in depth, that way both myself and the teacher can benefit from it. It makes each and every student feel heard of and has us become more engaged in class. Notwithstanding my love and interest towards these types of academic academic aspects of school, if I am by any chance chosen to speak about my book review I would be willing to do so. In the first place, the fact that the teacher is willing to bring his own students to present with him is so unique and nice of him. My friends and I were talking about, him bringing a few of us with him and that he is somewhat proud of us makes us so grateful and  motivated to work harder and live up to his expectations

notes:

 JALT - language teaching

every november they have a big online conference

one of the largest organizations in Japan

book review terms, chapter summary on blog, writing tools, flipgrid, google, 

*google slides, shareable 

what it was like doing this project, the research, blog writing, writing, comments about changing this into a presentation

learn from their students, students have a lot to say,