Learning How To Present To Elementary School Students

Recently, I was invited to present at Virtual Ventures Programming Camp to students ranging from grades 3-8.

I was really excited at the chance to give a talk, but upon actually sitting down to write one, I realized I was really out of my element.

I’d presented to hundreds of university and highschool students and done plenty of demos to executives and other developers at work, but I quickly realized I didn’t have a clue how to create something engaging for kids.

I was asked to present three “career day” style presentations talking about what my job is like and what I do in my regular work day.

The first of the three would be for a group of 3rd-5th graders, and the later two would be for 6th-8th graders.

Inevitably, I came to the conclusion to Google: “How to how to present to third graders” in an effort to create something that would actually resonate with the kids.

Here is what I learned.

Creating a Story

The first search result I got was “NASA’s Giving Presentations in Elementary Schools: Best Practices”.

One piece of advice I took from the NASA guide was that “Students like to think of events and information in terms of a story”.

To add that “story” element to my presentation, I tried to use my own story of how I became a Software Developer.

I had started programming at around the same age as the kids at the camp, so a large section of my presentation was dedicated to talking about what got me interested in coding and showing a roadmap of projects I’d made over the years ranging from (ugly & unfinished) projects I’d made when I was ten, all the way through ones I’d made in highschool, and finally projects I work on now in my full-time job.

What had gotten me into programming as a kid was trying to make my own video games. So I had a lot of videos of old projects I’d made over the years.

The kids really responded well to seeing these more visual demos and would even ask where they could download or try the games (which made me happy).

I hope that in seeing some of these demos and what I was able to create at a young age could inspire the kids to know that age isn’t a restriction to building a cool project.

Connecting To Their Lives

The second search result I found is “How to Crush Your Elementary School Career Day Presentation” by Jeff Perkins.

The first piece of advice I took away from this article was the advice to “Make it Relevant to Their World”.

Jeff talks about how in his talk on marketing he used the example of having to sell “slime” (something every kid could relate to).

Building on that example, when I first introduced the concept of “software”, I made sure to mention apps and games I knew the kids would know like TikTok, Minecraft, Youtube, etc.

Later in the presentation I had a section talking about how one of the biggest challenges for Software Developers is writing efficient code.

To demonstrate this example, I broke down a simplified version of how a Google Search really works (an example I figured all the kids would know) and how speed and memory usage are critical to creating great software.

Getting The Kids Involved

This is the 2nd piece of advice I took from Jeff’s article.

Especially with the 3rd-5th graders, they were so eager to raise their hands that they’d raise them before they’d even come up with an answer they wanted to share.

After the first presentation had so many constant hands, I added significantly more chances for the students to participate and engage with the presentation.

Some examples questions I let the kids answer were

• What is “Software”?
• What are “Bugs”?
• How many Google Searches are made each day?
• How many developers did it take to build {x}?

The kids were able to easily engage, especially with the “guess a number” type questions where there wasn’t really any expectation that anyone would know the right answer.

One example I thought was cool was when I let the kids try to guess how many Software Engineers work at Google, to reveal it was 100000+, then asked the kids how many Developers worked on Among us (an indie game the kids know) and the answer was 3.

I thought it was cool to highlight that no matter the size of the team, you can build cool stuff.

Making The Slides Fun

This is something I do with all my slides, but it definitely helped keep the kids engaged.

To make my slides fun, I like to include a lot of moving gifs.

Not the cringe, “meme style” gifs that every corporate slide deck forces in your face to seem fun.

I specifically used a lot of “Pusheen” gifs. Pusheen is a cartoon cat popular across the internet.

Each time I opened my slides, some kid would comment or point out how they thought Pusheen typing on a computer was cute:

By including a different little animation on each slide, I really think it helped keep the kids engaged and looking forward to seeing what little animation might be on the next slide.

It also kind of goes without saying that a good slide deck shouldn’t really have words and should mostly be visual aid.

My slides heavily included videos of my past projects, images, diagrams, etc.

What Didn’t Work

In highsight, I would have tried to further simplify some of my content for the 3rd-5th graders and aim to just make it more fun for them.

I had a segment in my presentation on “what I do at my job” and I don’t think they took away much more then “I code stuff” (which in highsight is fair). The 3rd-5th graders paid the most attention when I started talking about video games and the games I’d made.

In my first 6th-8th grader presentation, I tried to bring a “career”-y type angle. I remember being in middle school when all of a sudden society kind of starts trying to get you to think about what you want to do, so I thought it would be cool to showcase some career paths they might not of heard of before. I felt like it took up too much time with too little moments for the students to engage with the presentation. It kind of just felt like a text dump.

During my second 6th-8th grader presentation, I broke up a lot of the “text dump” parts with more questions and opportunities for the students to engage. I tried to pace it so that it never went too long before people would have the chance to raise their hands again. I got the most “hand raising” engagement during this presentation out of the three.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the three presentations went well for the most part. Some things could have been better, but now I have a basis for how I can improve.

I hope some of the info I’ve shared here can help you if you’re ever in a similar situation.

Special thanks to Veronica for inviting me to present :)

If you’d like to see my slides, check them out here.