5A.3
Presenting Initial Findings:
Why and how do we share our thinking?


The purpose of presenting your initial findings is to hear other people's perceptions and use them to inform your thinking. There are no right or wrong responses—only different ways of looking at evidence and thinking about what advances and improves teaching and learning.

There are several ways to schedule the structured mini-presentations depending on the size of your learning community. Not everyone needs to hear every presentation; however, if your group is ten or fewer people, you may want to do just that. Then it’s simple. Schedule breaks and begin.

If your learning community is larger than ten, it becomes difficult to listen attentively and offer thoughtful, considered feedback. You may want to break into smaller groups. You might consider going through one structured round in the small groups and nominating a person or two from each group to share their inquiry study with the entire group for a second round.

If your group is twenty or more, you may want to have people self select into groups of five or six and ask them to number off within the groups. For the first round, the self-selected groups present to each other. For a second round, all the "ones" form a group and present to each other, the "twos" form another group, the "threes" another group and so on. You may want to have a final round where a few people present to the entire group.

Because two different groups often respond differently to the same presentation of evidence, it is interesting to structure the initial sharing into two rounds. The point of sharing your work in-progress is to get other people's perspectives and suggestions so that you can make adjustments or even re-shape the course of your inquiry to make it a more productive experience for you. Two group responses will give you much more to think about.

There is only one rule: Comments, responses, and questions are about helping the presenters use the information and evidence they have gathered as fully and deeply as they can to improve their instructional practices. Judgmental comments that criticize without suggestions for improvement are not helpful.

Decide on a schedule and begin presentations.