Confidence-boosting presentation session

Blue Skies Level 1 and Level 2 had a joint presentation skills session held at RAF Valley on 24th January. The session was delivered by personnel from Ops Wing, Sqn Ldr Jon King, Flt Lt Martin Hughes and Flt Lt Ian Rees, as well as Bonnie Diamond from the MET Office. The main objectives of the day were for the students to learn what makes a good presentation, how to present yourself and to increase confidence in public speaking.

After a brief about presentations, the first task was for the students and adults to take turns in introducing themselves at the front of the room; several students were very reticent about this, although most stated their name and a fact about themselves.

The students listened to a formal presentation delivered by Bonnie. It was based upon a MET brief she would give to the pilots on a daily basis. This was followed by a presentation from Martin about his trip to Malawi, regaling his stories about spiders and lions. The students worked in groups to write down the differences between a formal and informal presentation. They noticed the difference in language, intonation, reaction to the audience with the informal presentation having a few jokes in it, the powerpoint slides and pictures and how much the presenter moved around.

The students then listened to a brief about bad presentations, with the challenge of winning sweets if anyone noticed a bad point; everybody won a sweet!

In the afternoon, the students were split into groups, with at least one Level 2 student helping the Level 1s. In their groups, they had to write a powerpoint presentation, stating their name, their hobby / sport, their favourite aspect of the Blue Skies programme and what they have learnt on Blue Skies. Each group presented their powerpoint, with every person saying their slide, while members of the audience wrote something positive about each speaker.

Three of the students had this to say about their experience: Atia, 13 said “I believed in myself today. I believed that I could do a presentation in front of everyone and I did. I got up and I achieved my goal that I set for myself and it felt good I did it, even though I was nervous. I accomplished my goal, no matter what.”

Chris, 15 “I feel great as I was able to get a few people to laugh” and Jess, 14 “I’m proud that I spoke in front of everyone. To improve, I could look at the audience more.”

All the students should be immensely proud of themselves, considering that some did not stand at the front to say their name at the start of the day.

In answer to the question, ‘how confident do you feel presenting to 30 people?’ with 1 being not confident at all and 10 being very confident, the students collectively went from 4.5 at the beginning of the day to 7 by the end, a big increase in confidence!

Thank you to Jon, Martin, Ian and Bonnie for delivering such a confidence-boosting session.