Our group, as it was small and consisted of friends, worked in well-orchestrated harmony. No arguments arose, no friction occurred as we worked out the workload. Our working process was basically thus:
1) We sat down, in class, and discussed how we would approach the topic. We decided that Rhiannon and Amanda would each write a speech about Christopher’s relationship with his Mother and Father, and I would be in charge of a half-time role-play and draw pictures to support their speeches. We came up with the idea of taking the class outside and having a Mother tree and Father tree to help focus them on the topic and hold their attention. However, on the day, it was raining so we needed to keep it inside.

2) We discussed all of the points that we could think of that could be included in the speeches about Christopher’s relationship with his mother and father. Amanda and Rhiannon took these down in dot points and over the weekend wrote their speeches

3) I spent Monday night planning the roleplay, drawing the pictures and writing a short introduction and conclusion

4) On Tuesday we ran through the order of things during recess and made sure we were prepared to speak on Wednesday.

We were all happy with the proportion of work we were doing – at one point Amanda thought I was getting too much work to do, but I thought she and Rhiannon had more to do than me! My role was less regimented into a speech and more creative and spontaneous than theirs, but in the end it consisted of the same amount of effort and work as Amanda and Rhiannon’s speeches.Our presentation had several effective aspects, so I cannot choose just one. Here are some of what I believe were the things that separated our speech from the others:

1) Had the idea of going outside worked, it would have been effective in giving the audience some variation as they listened to the speeches. As it was, the pictures and illustrated trees on the whiteboard were adequate proxies to give the audience something to focus on.

2) Breaking up the two speeches with a roleplay in the middle was a good device to hold the audience’s attention with variation – no matter how riveting and interesting a speech is, there is only so long you can expect a group to pay attention. With the role-play to give them something to do, it refreshed their attention spans for the second speech. 3) Breaking up the topic into three definite parts so that people could
think clearly and concentrate on one aspect of the topic was a good way to encourage deeper thought into the issues raised.

For the next oral presentation, I think the only thing I would do differently is have some more visual aids, such as a video. The group that
had the video captured people’s attention immediately, and I see it as a very quick and entertaining way to get a point across to an audience.

I’m very pleased with the way that this presentation turned out, and was very glad that I had such a nice group to work with. High school was riddles with the horrors of mismatched and lazy group members who put all of the work on to me, and it was a beautiful change to have a small, cooperative and intelligent faction to work with.

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