Micro-Symposium

The opportunity to give every one of your 30 students the opportunity to give a 4 minute presentation 3 times in one class period.

Students develop a 3-4 minute presentation of a product they have created or a re-teaching of an individually difficult concept or standard.
While students are working, I touch base with all of them and record all the topics. I then break them into 3 diverse topic rotations (to limit the amount of repetition per rotation).
Rotation 1 presenters get 2 minutes to set up around the room while I have the rest of class partner up.
Each partnership goes to a presenter of their choosing for the first 4 minute “session.”
After the first session is complete, give audience groups 30 seconds to report to their next session and begin again. Repeat for session 3.
After 3 sessions are complete, it is time to rotate out your presenters – they get 2 minutes while you again break up the new audience groups into pairs to rotate through the 3 sessions. Repeat the whole process for rotation 3.
Each rotation takes exactly 15 minutes (3 x 4 minute sessions + 2 x 30 seconds rotation +2 minute set-up).

Every student gets to present in 45 minutes (as opposed to 30 students x 4 minutes each + 1 minute setup = 150 minutes or 2.5 hours or 3+ class periods).
Students are working on something that is individually challenging to them (and hopefully interesting!)
Students get the chance to improve each time they present.
Less impact of stage fright. Students are presenting to only 2 others at once – and know that the people they are presenting to just did or will soon present.
Audience engagment is high. Students are moving in between each presentation, and there is an element of choice of who they are going to see.

This tends to be a review before the test – or an opportunity to re-teach.
I don’t grade these. I give feedback while they are developing their presentations when I check-in. I watch for anyone struggling during the first session and quickly give suggestions before their next session.
To ensure that I can get through all three in my 46 minute class period, I give all the instructions and do a session run-through the day before.
I have the rule that there is no doubling up – groups are instructed that only 1 partnership audience per presenter and you can’t visit more than once.
If there is focus or respect issues that occur when specific personalities are together, I impose a requirement to not be in the same group as audience or presenter.
I use class time for developing these, usually 2 class periods. The time I gain back from not needing to devote 3 or 4 days to presenting makes this possible and respects student time outside of my classroom. It also gives me the opportunity to check-in throughout the process so I can hold them accountable without needing to “grade” it.
Noise. It will be loud – but it will be a productive loud!