Prepping your child for an oral presentation
The oral presentation is truly a rite of passage for parents. Even if your child is studious, attentive, and responsible, helping them prepare a classroom presentation is quite the undertaking. Why?
Because the work and skills involved are complex: your child needs to do research, break down and organize information, write up a short text (to be submitted to the teacher), memorize their presentation, find relevant images and create visual aids (posters, handouts, or PowerPoint slides), and practise, practise, practise!
Speak a bit louder!
Are you planning to give your oral presentation lying down? Come on, stand up!
Stop laughing! You need to be ready by tomorrow.
Don’t talk so fast. Articulate. Don’t read your notes.
And so on.
Imagine preparing an oral presentation with a child who always forgets their school books, can’t sit still for more than 10 minutes, is painfully shy, or has a terrible short-term memory.
Imagine how tiring it would be to help them after working all day at the office, getting stuck in traffic, making a hasty dinner, and dropping off your other kids at hockey practice. Now, let’s go a little further. Imagine if you (and your child) were also coping with a divorce, a mental health issue, or financial difficulties. It would be enough to drive you crazy!
Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Every time I rush to the local copy shop at 9:55 p.m. to print photos for one of my daughters’ oral presentations, I bump into four or five other parents who are just as out of breath.
It’s comforting to know that other parents are scrambling to help their children too.
We confess that we’ve all done over 60 percent of our kids’ work. We laugh. I feel a weight lift off my chest. And, lo and behold, my child is also more relaxed the following morning.
One day, I ran into one of my daughters’ teachers, Shirley. I thanked her for the wonderful comments she’d left on “my” poster—the one I’d helped my daughter make for her oral presentation. In response to my joke, Shirley looked me squarely in the eye and said:
You know, it’s great when parents get so involved. When you took the time to make that poster with your daughter, you not only taught her valuable skills, but also showed her how much you care about her education.
Ten years later, I still remember her words.
In school, the goal of an oral presentation is to help children practise speaking in front of an audience. But after spending hours helping my kids research their interests, cut out photos, and decorate posters, I got to see them in a whole new light.
As French scientist Albert Jacquard once said, knowledge is useful—but the purpose of knowledge is connection.