Giselle and I have several strengths that are really helping us work well together. One of the most important things that is working is our strong communication. We make sure to talk weekly with each other which keeps everyone updated on what is going on. In addition we meet in person to discuss and plan the speech so that we are fully prepared. These regular check-ins help us stay organized and avoid last-minute confusion. Giselle and I know exactly what we are going to talk about and that clarity makes the whole process much smoother. Because we both understand our role and we are able to divide the work fairly and support each other as needed. Still even with these positive aspects, there are areas we can work on for next time. One goal is to add more details to our slideshow. While the slides are organized, including stronger details would make our presentation more engaging and easier to follow for the audience. Such as adding more pictures to the slideshow and going over the steps and making sure there are no mistakes. Another thing to work on is we have started making bracelets for everyone. We began by cutting each person’s string and knotting the top, and we plan to continue until everyone has their own bracelets in the class.
Overall, for not practicing beforehand, I believe that it went smoothly, there was however room for improvement. Technical difficulties got the best of us to start. One area of improvement would be orienting our slides better. I think overall the content in the slides is adequate and informative. However, I think tidying them up will improve the clarity and delivery. The best thing we could do from here until Friday is practice, practice, practice. The anatomy of a fishing pole slide I can improve, quickly explaining each part so the audience can get a full picture of what they will be looking at. I also think we could both sound more fluid when we speak, you could tell we weren’t as prepared as we should’ve been. Next, were my slides on the instruction to tie the clinch not, good, quality slides, but I needed to explain each step better; it was hard to demonstrate without the actual material. Other than those small things, we will be ready by Wednesday!
Reflecting on our speech, I would say that I need to practice my part of the speech, as well as going along with the slide show. I found it hard to go through the speech and keep track of the slide show order. But with some work, me and Kiera are hoping to see some improvement for the final run. I also am currently practicing the order or the steps to make sure I have that down. When presenting in front of the class, confidence is key. When working together it’s also important to understand when my partner is speaking. When a speech is well spoken it means both sides can correlate and determine a flow pattern. I also felt in the video I was a bit jittery, a little unprepared. Like I said, with more practice I’m sure I will feel better about speaking in front of the audience showing a skill. Even for me, publicly speaking is a struggle, but presenting a new skill is also nerve-wracking. Having to learn a new skill in a short amount of time and then having to show my classmates can cause some anxiety. Although I do believe this process of being familiar with public speaking will boost my ability to in the workplace or just in general.
Journal 9
Overall, I think the sketchy speech went well. Maddie and I couldn’t do a lot of practicing because she was very sick, and I didn’t want to get it. Unfortunately, I got sick anyway. But it was after the sketchy speech, so it did not interfere with the sketchy speech delivery. I think that we did well at being confident and interacting with our audience. We got good feedback about our slide presentation, and I think that it will be very helpful while we are doing our speech. Our feedback showed that our photos were very helpful.
It was hard to do the actual presentation without having the string there and not being able to help the audience understand it in person. I think when we have the string in front of everyone, it will be a lot easier to explain, and the audience will understand it better. I think I also need to work harder at not stuttering and remembering to look at the audience. I need to practice being less nervous while presenting. I liked that we went first so I could get it over with, and it was less time to actually think about the fact that I had to present in front of an audience.
Journal 9
My partner and I watched our dry run and revisited, and revised on some things we could work on. We noticed we could have slowed down on our explanations of directions and been more specific or clear, and we think having our materials will help us be more engaged with the class. Another thing we wanted to touch on was making more eye contact with the class rather than reading straight off our slideshow. We both agreed we could incorporate more eye contact, but with the specific details in building our airplane it may be a little difficult to not read from our slideshow. A way we could work on this is by reading our slide, and then scanning the room to see if the class is following along, or if they need help with any aspect of the directions we’re giving, that way we can get our directions off and keep everybody on track. We got a time of 4:17 I believe last week and with handing out paper that will buff our time a little bit, along with helping out classmates we should be right in that sweet spot of 6ish minutes maybe a little over or under.
After watching back the video of our live dry run from last class, I think there are a few things that I could work on for next time when I deliver the final speech. First, I think I need to work on making better eye contact with the audience. This will help them know that I am feeling confident in what I am saying and performing. It also just gives off a better engagement with the audience as well. Second, I think I need to stop moving my hands around so much. It’s a cause of distraction for the audience and I don’t want them to be paying attention to my hands instead of the actual topic we are trying to teach. And then I think I should work on not depending on the slides to read off of, but instead actually engrave the learning process better. This will also help me to control my use of spacer words. Something I thought I did well on was projecting a positive and fun tone, as well as speaking loudly and clearly enough. This is important to the audience because it is crucial to give clear instructions when learning something about a new topic.
After viewing my video for Speech #2 I would say that I need to work on memorizing my script for the speech, and not having to view my computer. I also noticed that I should work on being less fidgety, I need to keep my body more still and not speak with my hands as much, or move my feet around. This is distracting and I think it makes me look unconfident. Since the dry run I have improved my script and worked on rehearsing it to assure I have a good presentation. I think our slides are pretty good and do not have too many words, as that is a pet peeve of mine. I think the biggest thing for me is to just practice, practice, practice and get my speech down.
Self feedback letter
My partner and I recently presented to the class on self-defense. Honestly, we weren’t as prepared as we intended to be. We had planned to have a clear, structured presentation but when the time came, we found ourselves rambling a bit and jumping between points without the smooth flow we wanted. It felt like we were trying to cover too much at once, and our nerves definitely played a role in that. Despite the shaky start and occasional moments of confusion, we managed to stay focused on the main message: the importance of knowing basic self-defense techniques for safety and confidence. By the end of the presentation, it seemed like our classmates really connected with the topic. Their interest and enthusiasm grew as we shared some practical tips and real-life examples. Although our presentation wasn’t perfect, we succeeded in getting the class excited for the next session, where we plan to demonstrate some hands-on techniques. This experience taught us the importance of better preparation and practicing beforehand, but also that passion and engagement can still make an impact, even when things don’t go exactly as planned. We’re looking forward to coming back stronger next time!
While watching my dry-run from class last week, I noticed that we were reading off of the slides a lot rather than speaking toward the class. Along with that, I noticed that my stance was a bit unstable, which could have potentially portrayed underconfidence in what I was saying. We definitely could have prepared a lot more than we did, as a lot of our dry-run was somewhat improvised. However, I thought we spoke very clear and kept the audience engaged. We held off showing the class our self-defense moves until this upcoming class, so I think that definitely kept the audience eager to see what would come next. The class also seemed to enjoy the spinning wheel with everybody’s names on it, which I am excited to see the outcome of for our final delivery of the speech. Something I am worried about for our final speech is the amount of time we will spend delivering our speech; we were within the time limit for our dry-run, but I’m worried that – with the adding of the self-defense moves and the demonstration of them – we may not be able to keep our speech within the allotted time. Despite this, I am looking forward to seeing how our final speech turns out today along with everybody else’s.
When watching my dry run I noticed a few things to improve on. When speaking, I should use a more clear voice to project to the whole room. This will help so everyone can hear and understand. What I can do to help this is speaking louder, and not speaking as shaky. This means to take a deep breath before and slow down with a louder voice to make it more clear. Another thing to work on is my hand movements. This means I was using my hands a lot while speaking and causing a lot of motion around me. This can lead to being distracting to others and I need to work on not moving my hands and arms as much and use my voice instead of actions. Another thing to work on that is constantly needing improvement is eye contact. This means looking up and around the room more and at the audience I am speaking to. I noticed when I was speaking I was looking more at the slide show behind me, or looking at the computer in front of me. There was no need for this because I have everything memorized and there was nothing in front of me to help, I was just using it as something to look at.
At the start of our dry run, we weren’t able to get the slideshow working on Nic’s computer so we had to use mine, and I didn’t have the updated version of the slideshow pulled up already. We also had an issue with timing. After watching the video, I was able to see our presentation from an outside perspective. We definitely sped through most of the content because we didn’t know how to present without also doing the physical work. For what it ended up being, I think it was a good run-through of what our presentation will look like. I think personally I should work on projecting, slowing down my parts, and really explaining what I am doing when I start doing the knots. I think overall I did well and was fairly confident.
When I practiced and delivered my speech on how to make a balloon dog, I ended up having to do it by myself because my partner was out sick. To make things even trickier, the balloon popped before the speech started, so I didn’t actually get to make the balloon dog during the presentation. That definitely threw me off a bit, but I still tried to explain each step as clearly as I could without the visual.
I think I did a decent job talking through the process and keeping the pacing steady, even without the balloon. I focused on describing the steps in a way that people could picture, and I tried to stay calm and confident despite the hiccups.
Not having the balloon and being alone made it harder to keep the audience engaged, though. I noticed I looked down or lost eye contact a few times, and without a visual, it was more of a challenge to keep their attention. If I ever have to do something like this again, I’ll make sure to have a backup balloon ready and practice explaining the steps even without props. It didn’t go perfectly, but I think it went well enough.
Journal 9
For my dry run video, I made a balloon dog. I had to film it outside of class since I was sick, which was kind of annoying because I didn’t get the same classroom setup. Doing it at home felt a little awkward because I had to figure out where to put the camera and how to make sure my hands were in the frame. I messed up a couple times and had to restart, but honestly that helped me get more comfortable with the process.
The actual balloon dog was harder than I expected. I thought it would be simple, but when I tried explaining each step while twisting the balloon, I realized I was going too fast. It’s easy to just make the dog, but slowing down and making sure the directions are clear for someone else is definitely a skill I need to work on. Watching it back, I noticed I also didn’t talk much, so it came off kind of boring. Next time, I want to add more personality and energy so it’s not just me twisting a balloon.
Overall, even though I wasn’t in class, this practice gave me a good idea of what I need to fix for the real thing.
I think what was working was the history and the way the slides were set up. Some things that I could work on is knowing the slides better and keeping to the script, also looking at the crowd more. I think I need to practice the slides more so I can be more confident and prepared for what I’m saying, I have the steps to make the crane down I just need to go over which specific step are mine. In the end this will help me be more confident to look in the crowd more because I know what I’m doing. One of the feedback notes we got back was to project more so this goes with being more confident. Also actually doing the step instead of just going over them on a slide will really be helpful for the final speech. Also I need to make sure I do the steps slow enough and make sure I show them well so people know what I’m doing, some people on the notes said it looks confusing. I will also take the time to ask if anyone needs help throughout the speech that way they don’t feel lost. I just need to remember to breath and that it’s ok, so I don’t get to nervous.
While watching my dry-run speech from last week I noticed that me and Lilian work pretty well together and one of those things is our great communication. We make sure to agree and talk about everything before making a decision or changing something which helps us stay on the same page and keeps our presentation flowing smoothly. I think this shows that we have built a good partnership and that we trust each other when it comes to preparing and presenting our material. Things that I might need to work on is looking less at the slides to create a better connection with the audience. If I can maintain more eye contact and rely less on the slides, I believe it will make my delivery feel more confident and engaging. Another thing that I notice is that I should practice speaking a little bit louder, because when I get nervous, I tend to speak quite low, and that can make it harder for the audience to hear me clearly. This is definitely something I need to work on so that my voice projects better and reaches everyone in the room. Overall, I’m proud of the teamwork me and Lilian have shown so far, and I am looking forward to improving my delivery for the final presentation.
15 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 9”
Giselle and I have several strengths that are really helping us work well together. One of the most important things that is working is our strong communication. We make sure to talk weekly with each other which keeps everyone updated on what is going on. In addition we meet in person to discuss and plan the speech so that we are fully prepared. These regular check-ins help us stay organized and avoid last-minute confusion. Giselle and I know exactly what we are going to talk about and that clarity makes the whole process much smoother. Because we both understand our role and we are able to divide the work fairly and support each other as needed. Still even with these positive aspects, there are areas we can work on for next time. One goal is to add more details to our slideshow. While the slides are organized, including stronger details would make our presentation more engaging and easier to follow for the audience. Such as adding more pictures to the slideshow and going over the steps and making sure there are no mistakes. Another thing to work on is we have started making bracelets for everyone. We began by cutting each person’s string and knotting the top, and we plan to continue until everyone has their own bracelets in the class.
Overall, for not practicing beforehand, I believe that it went smoothly, there was however room for improvement. Technical difficulties got the best of us to start. One area of improvement would be orienting our slides better. I think overall the content in the slides is adequate and informative. However, I think tidying them up will improve the clarity and delivery. The best thing we could do from here until Friday is practice, practice, practice. The anatomy of a fishing pole slide I can improve, quickly explaining each part so the audience can get a full picture of what they will be looking at. I also think we could both sound more fluid when we speak, you could tell we weren’t as prepared as we should’ve been. Next, were my slides on the instruction to tie the clinch not, good, quality slides, but I needed to explain each step better; it was hard to demonstrate without the actual material. Other than those small things, we will be ready by Wednesday!
Reflecting on our speech, I would say that I need to practice my part of the speech, as well as going along with the slide show. I found it hard to go through the speech and keep track of the slide show order. But with some work, me and Kiera are hoping to see some improvement for the final run. I also am currently practicing the order or the steps to make sure I have that down. When presenting in front of the class, confidence is key. When working together it’s also important to understand when my partner is speaking. When a speech is well spoken it means both sides can correlate and determine a flow pattern. I also felt in the video I was a bit jittery, a little unprepared. Like I said, with more practice I’m sure I will feel better about speaking in front of the audience showing a skill. Even for me, publicly speaking is a struggle, but presenting a new skill is also nerve-wracking. Having to learn a new skill in a short amount of time and then having to show my classmates can cause some anxiety. Although I do believe this process of being familiar with public speaking will boost my ability to in the workplace or just in general.
Journal 9
Overall, I think the sketchy speech went well. Maddie and I couldn’t do a lot of practicing because she was very sick, and I didn’t want to get it. Unfortunately, I got sick anyway. But it was after the sketchy speech, so it did not interfere with the sketchy speech delivery. I think that we did well at being confident and interacting with our audience. We got good feedback about our slide presentation, and I think that it will be very helpful while we are doing our speech. Our feedback showed that our photos were very helpful.
It was hard to do the actual presentation without having the string there and not being able to help the audience understand it in person. I think when we have the string in front of everyone, it will be a lot easier to explain, and the audience will understand it better. I think I also need to work harder at not stuttering and remembering to look at the audience. I need to practice being less nervous while presenting. I liked that we went first so I could get it over with, and it was less time to actually think about the fact that I had to present in front of an audience.
Journal 9
My partner and I watched our dry run and revisited, and revised on some things we could work on. We noticed we could have slowed down on our explanations of directions and been more specific or clear, and we think having our materials will help us be more engaged with the class. Another thing we wanted to touch on was making more eye contact with the class rather than reading straight off our slideshow. We both agreed we could incorporate more eye contact, but with the specific details in building our airplane it may be a little difficult to not read from our slideshow. A way we could work on this is by reading our slide, and then scanning the room to see if the class is following along, or if they need help with any aspect of the directions we’re giving, that way we can get our directions off and keep everybody on track. We got a time of 4:17 I believe last week and with handing out paper that will buff our time a little bit, along with helping out classmates we should be right in that sweet spot of 6ish minutes maybe a little over or under.
After watching back the video of our live dry run from last class, I think there are a few things that I could work on for next time when I deliver the final speech. First, I think I need to work on making better eye contact with the audience. This will help them know that I am feeling confident in what I am saying and performing. It also just gives off a better engagement with the audience as well. Second, I think I need to stop moving my hands around so much. It’s a cause of distraction for the audience and I don’t want them to be paying attention to my hands instead of the actual topic we are trying to teach. And then I think I should work on not depending on the slides to read off of, but instead actually engrave the learning process better. This will also help me to control my use of spacer words. Something I thought I did well on was projecting a positive and fun tone, as well as speaking loudly and clearly enough. This is important to the audience because it is crucial to give clear instructions when learning something about a new topic.
After viewing my video for Speech #2 I would say that I need to work on memorizing my script for the speech, and not having to view my computer. I also noticed that I should work on being less fidgety, I need to keep my body more still and not speak with my hands as much, or move my feet around. This is distracting and I think it makes me look unconfident. Since the dry run I have improved my script and worked on rehearsing it to assure I have a good presentation. I think our slides are pretty good and do not have too many words, as that is a pet peeve of mine. I think the biggest thing for me is to just practice, practice, practice and get my speech down.
Self feedback letter
My partner and I recently presented to the class on self-defense. Honestly, we weren’t as prepared as we intended to be. We had planned to have a clear, structured presentation but when the time came, we found ourselves rambling a bit and jumping between points without the smooth flow we wanted. It felt like we were trying to cover too much at once, and our nerves definitely played a role in that. Despite the shaky start and occasional moments of confusion, we managed to stay focused on the main message: the importance of knowing basic self-defense techniques for safety and confidence. By the end of the presentation, it seemed like our classmates really connected with the topic. Their interest and enthusiasm grew as we shared some practical tips and real-life examples. Although our presentation wasn’t perfect, we succeeded in getting the class excited for the next session, where we plan to demonstrate some hands-on techniques. This experience taught us the importance of better preparation and practicing beforehand, but also that passion and engagement can still make an impact, even when things don’t go exactly as planned. We’re looking forward to coming back stronger next time!
While watching my dry-run from class last week, I noticed that we were reading off of the slides a lot rather than speaking toward the class. Along with that, I noticed that my stance was a bit unstable, which could have potentially portrayed underconfidence in what I was saying. We definitely could have prepared a lot more than we did, as a lot of our dry-run was somewhat improvised. However, I thought we spoke very clear and kept the audience engaged. We held off showing the class our self-defense moves until this upcoming class, so I think that definitely kept the audience eager to see what would come next. The class also seemed to enjoy the spinning wheel with everybody’s names on it, which I am excited to see the outcome of for our final delivery of the speech. Something I am worried about for our final speech is the amount of time we will spend delivering our speech; we were within the time limit for our dry-run, but I’m worried that – with the adding of the self-defense moves and the demonstration of them – we may not be able to keep our speech within the allotted time. Despite this, I am looking forward to seeing how our final speech turns out today along with everybody else’s.
When watching my dry run I noticed a few things to improve on. When speaking, I should use a more clear voice to project to the whole room. This will help so everyone can hear and understand. What I can do to help this is speaking louder, and not speaking as shaky. This means to take a deep breath before and slow down with a louder voice to make it more clear. Another thing to work on is my hand movements. This means I was using my hands a lot while speaking and causing a lot of motion around me. This can lead to being distracting to others and I need to work on not moving my hands and arms as much and use my voice instead of actions. Another thing to work on that is constantly needing improvement is eye contact. This means looking up and around the room more and at the audience I am speaking to. I noticed when I was speaking I was looking more at the slide show behind me, or looking at the computer in front of me. There was no need for this because I have everything memorized and there was nothing in front of me to help, I was just using it as something to look at.
At the start of our dry run, we weren’t able to get the slideshow working on Nic’s computer so we had to use mine, and I didn’t have the updated version of the slideshow pulled up already. We also had an issue with timing. After watching the video, I was able to see our presentation from an outside perspective. We definitely sped through most of the content because we didn’t know how to present without also doing the physical work. For what it ended up being, I think it was a good run-through of what our presentation will look like. I think personally I should work on projecting, slowing down my parts, and really explaining what I am doing when I start doing the knots. I think overall I did well and was fairly confident.
When I practiced and delivered my speech on how to make a balloon dog, I ended up having to do it by myself because my partner was out sick. To make things even trickier, the balloon popped before the speech started, so I didn’t actually get to make the balloon dog during the presentation. That definitely threw me off a bit, but I still tried to explain each step as clearly as I could without the visual.
I think I did a decent job talking through the process and keeping the pacing steady, even without the balloon. I focused on describing the steps in a way that people could picture, and I tried to stay calm and confident despite the hiccups.
Not having the balloon and being alone made it harder to keep the audience engaged, though. I noticed I looked down or lost eye contact a few times, and without a visual, it was more of a challenge to keep their attention. If I ever have to do something like this again, I’ll make sure to have a backup balloon ready and practice explaining the steps even without props. It didn’t go perfectly, but I think it went well enough.
Journal 9
For my dry run video, I made a balloon dog. I had to film it outside of class since I was sick, which was kind of annoying because I didn’t get the same classroom setup. Doing it at home felt a little awkward because I had to figure out where to put the camera and how to make sure my hands were in the frame. I messed up a couple times and had to restart, but honestly that helped me get more comfortable with the process.
The actual balloon dog was harder than I expected. I thought it would be simple, but when I tried explaining each step while twisting the balloon, I realized I was going too fast. It’s easy to just make the dog, but slowing down and making sure the directions are clear for someone else is definitely a skill I need to work on. Watching it back, I noticed I also didn’t talk much, so it came off kind of boring. Next time, I want to add more personality and energy so it’s not just me twisting a balloon.
Overall, even though I wasn’t in class, this practice gave me a good idea of what I need to fix for the real thing.
I think what was working was the history and the way the slides were set up. Some things that I could work on is knowing the slides better and keeping to the script, also looking at the crowd more. I think I need to practice the slides more so I can be more confident and prepared for what I’m saying, I have the steps to make the crane down I just need to go over which specific step are mine. In the end this will help me be more confident to look in the crowd more because I know what I’m doing. One of the feedback notes we got back was to project more so this goes with being more confident. Also actually doing the step instead of just going over them on a slide will really be helpful for the final speech. Also I need to make sure I do the steps slow enough and make sure I show them well so people know what I’m doing, some people on the notes said it looks confusing. I will also take the time to ask if anyone needs help throughout the speech that way they don’t feel lost. I just need to remember to breath and that it’s ok, so I don’t get to nervous.
While watching my dry-run speech from last week I noticed that me and Lilian work pretty well together and one of those things is our great communication. We make sure to agree and talk about everything before making a decision or changing something which helps us stay on the same page and keeps our presentation flowing smoothly. I think this shows that we have built a good partnership and that we trust each other when it comes to preparing and presenting our material. Things that I might need to work on is looking less at the slides to create a better connection with the audience. If I can maintain more eye contact and rely less on the slides, I believe it will make my delivery feel more confident and engaging. Another thing that I notice is that I should practice speaking a little bit louder, because when I get nervous, I tend to speak quite low, and that can make it harder for the audience to hear me clearly. This is definitely something I need to work on so that my voice projects better and reaches everyone in the room. Overall, I’m proud of the teamwork me and Lilian have shown so far, and I am looking forward to improving my delivery for the final presentation.