Slide Mastery — Digital Futures

🎯 Learning Objectives

✓Apply the "one idea per slide" and "less text = more impact" principles
✓Create a 5-slide presentation that communicates clearly for a specific audience
✓Give and receive structured peer feedback on presentation design

📚 Key Vocabulary

Visual hierarchy

Ordering elements so the eye knows where to look first

Speaker notes

Prompts for the presenter — never read these aloud

Slide economy

Using only as many slides and words as necessary

Audience

Who you're communicating to — it changes every design decision

⏱️ Lesson Timing (50 mins)

🪝

Hook

5 mins

Show a deliberately terrible presentation (wall of text, WordArt, clip art, 14 bullet points per slide). Class picks out everything wrong. Then show the same information beautifully designed. Reaction.

👨‍🏫

Teach

10 mins

•One idea, one slide — ruthless editing
•Images do what words can't: use them instead of text where possible
•Fonts: 28pt minimum body, 40pt+ heading
•The "squint test": can you tell what's most important when you squint?
•Speaker notes: everything you say that isn't on screen
•Presenting: eye contact, pause, don't read the slide

🛠️

Create

40 mins

Students are given a text-heavy "wall of information" document about a topic they choose (sports, music, a country, a career). They must transform it into a 5-slide visual presentation for a Year 7 audience. Maximum 10 words per slide. Must include images, one data visualisation and speaker notes for each slide. Use PowerPoint Online or Canva Presentations.

Tools:

PowerPoint OnlineCanvaUnsplash (free images)

📢

5 mins

Quick fire — each student has 30 seconds to present their opening slide only. Peer votes: clear? Visual? Would you want to see the rest?

🔧 Tools & Resources

🤖 AI Angle

Use AI to generate speaker notes and suggest one key statistic or image idea per slide — but design the slides yourself.

📝 Evidence of Learning

5-slide presentation + speaker notes (exported PDF)

📚 Homework

Watch one TED Talk (under 10 minutes). Note 3 things the speaker does that makes it engaging. Bring notes to next lesson.

⏱️ 20 mins

♿ Differentiation

Support (for students who need help)

Slide skeleton with layout guides pre-set — students fill in the visual content

Extension (for advanced learners)

Record a 2-minute video of themselves presenting their slides. Review it and identify one improvement.

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