Effective teachers are always on the lookout for new ways to engage and inspire their students.
But finding fun and engaging ways to present information in the classroom is no easy task, especially given how dry the student curriculum can be.
With this in mind, it’s no wonder teachers are on the lookout for new creative ways to present classroom material.
But look no further. In this post, you’ll find six creative presentation ideas for the classroom you can start using right away for immediate effect.
Why You Should Be Using Creative Presentations In The Classroom
Regardless of the quality of the content delivered in the classroom environment, a teacher’s biggest hurdle will always be student engagement. Maintaining high student engagement levels is fundamental to ensuring your students absorb the information being provided.
It isn’t enough to regurgitate tired content – especially as part of a simple presentation. Today’s students have easy access to colorful, animated educational content, interactive quizzes and gamified learning platforms. The expectation in the classroom is increasingly that lessons will be both educational and fun at the same time.
Students now expect to be part of the lesson itself, collaborating, fully engaged, and present – not just as spectators. And this more involved approach can pay off with increased retention of the lesson material.
As their teacher, it’s up to you to find new, creative ways to present information within the lessons themselves in a way that delivers results.
Thankfully, with the recent uptake in classroom technology such as interactive displays, advanced teaching software, and more, creating classroom presentations that connect and engage is becoming easier by the day.
Technology And Creative Presentations
Advancements in technology are creating more unique, exciting ways to deliver classroom presentations in ways previously impossible using traditional projector/whiteboard style presentations.
Using tools such as Promethean’s interactive displays, students can now interact and collaborate in real-time as presentations are delivered. This technology enables students to engage in lessons through things like student polls, dynamic interactive quizzes, group collaborations, and much more.
These technological advancements will undoubtedly add more unique, creative ways to present classroom material in fun, collaborative ways in the future.
6 Creative Presentation Ideas For Schools
With in-classroom presentations being the preferred way for many teachers to deliver curriculum content, it’s important to keep things fresh to maintain student concentration.
Below are six creative presentation ideas that you can start using in your classroom right away:
1. Infographics help make information more engaging
Infographics are a great way to display dull information in a fun, engaging way that’s easy on the eye and simple to consume.
Consider infographics as part of your presentations when showcasing things like:
- Statistics
- Data
- Complex processes
- History
And with modern technology making the creation process simple, fast, and free, it’s a presentation method that should not be ignored.
Here are some free infographic creation tools to get you started:
2. Use storytelling to increase retention
Studies by American psychologist Jerome Seymour Bruner have shown that humans retain information up to twenty-two times more when wrapped inside a story, making storytelling a valuable skill and a great way to present boring details in the classroom.
Connecting facts together into a story may come more easily to some subjects, such as history, but storytelling can be applied to almost any topic. Chemical bonding, for example, can be brought to life through personifying the elements involved in a reaction and describing what each one is ‘looking for’ from a bond.
But storytelling, just like everything else, is a skill, and it takes practice to become a master storyteller.
If storytelling is something you struggle with, why not try using the “narrative arc” coined by executive communication coach Briar Goldman?
It’s a simple framework for compelling storytelling.
The Narrative Arc:
- Setting and characters
- Tension and conflict
- Climax
- Resolution
- New normal
There are a range of useful storytelling resources available in the Promethean Resource Library to help you incorporate this technique into your lessons.
3. Non-linear presentations take a novel approach to delivering information
Traditionally, presentations take a linear approach running from start to finish following a set order of events.
Non-linear presentations flip this model on its head.
Unlike traditional presentations, they don’t follow a strict order. Instead, they meander from topic cluster to topic cluster depending on student feedback.
The byproduct of this is higher student engagement and more fun all around.
While they may take a little extra time to create, their impact on students and their ability to retain information makes them more than worthwhile.
4. Capture students’ attention with surveys, polls and quizzes
Adding surveys, polls and quizzes into your classroom presentations is a great way to increase student engagement.
A simple, non-technical way to do this is with a raise of hands or pre-printed surveys and quizzes. However, tallying up the results can be time-consuming and detract from the lesson flow, which is less than ideal. A technological solution can be more streamlined and convenient.
Using tools like Google Classroom, for example (which Promethean’s products have integrations with) to manage this process will allow you to collect and display student data in real-time. This can really add to engagement levels in the classroom.
With class participation blended into the presentation, students have a more vested interest in the outcomes and results – helping them maintain focus for longer periods of time.
5. Gamification can motivate students
Adding gamification elements to your in-class presentations can be a refreshing way to get students motivated and involved.
Gamifying the process will help increase student awareness and add a layer of fun to the learning process, making the consumption of even unexciting content fun.
Here are a few ideas you can try:
- Split the class into groups for a memory test at the end of the presentation and give the winners a reward.
- Use the presentation information to create fun challenges for your students to complete.
- Hide answers to quiz questions within a presentation for students to find.
- Add rewards for completing challenges.
6. Photo-only presentations change the way students need to pay attention
As a teacher, it’s all too often that you find yourself reading and reciting lessons from your notes and classroom slides. This is great as it ensures you’re covering all curriculum areas, but it’s not always the most engaging way for students to learn.
So why not try the photo-only presentation method?
What is the photo-only method?
It’s simply a presentation style whereby your class slides are free from any text, containing just images alone.
Using classroom slides in this way can help you present classroom material in a more conversational, engaging way by freeing you to digress away from topic specifics and flow with the classroom and their feedback more harmoniously.
With this more natural speech flow and the increased tonality and cadence that comes with this method of delivery, the knock-on effect is that students will pay more attention to what you have to say, internalizing more information in the process.
Conclusion
Classroom presentations come with the territory of being a teacher, but that doesn’t mean they have to be boring.
In fact, with a little foresight and planning, there are plenty of creative ways to present dull, dry information in the classroom in a way that connects with the students rather than leaving them disengaged, irritable and bored.
Hopefully, armed with the creative presentation ideas above, you can start implementing some of these methods into your teachings and see for yourself the impact that new presentation techniques and fresh ideas can make on you and your students.
And to really bring your presentations to life, check out Promethean’s industry-leading interactive displays and lesson delivery software.
Let us help you transform your classroom into a fully-engaged learning environment. Request a FREE virtual demo from one of our experts today!
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