The first time I did painting with a class, I didn’t realize how short of an attention span the students had.  I did my first demo on brush strokes from the Impressionists style in the centre of the room.  I asked all of the students to gather around the demo area to watch me paint.  The problem was that many of the students decided to stand behind students and eventually slouched back.  I had asked several times for them to come close but they just refused/ looked bored.  I had to focus on the demo and accept that not all of the students will be interested no matter how much I tried to engage them.

Acknowledging that not all of the students were going to stand close to the demo, I decided to paint my worksheet and hold it up each time I worked on a new portion of the worksheet.  After I spent some 15-20 minutes doing the demo, I felt like I needed to end it.  I let the students work for the remainder of the day but unfortunately, they ran out of time.  They had to wrap up their paints to use for next day.

I asked the teacher about how I conducted the class and she mentioned that I needed to keep my demos short and let them work for 75% of the class.  The students prefer to work and they want to work.  They will zone out fast if I talk for more than 15 minutes.  I must figure out how to condense my talk but do I need to do this for presenting information?  For demonstrations, I believe that keeping things short and sweet is necessary.  For longer presentations, breaking it into portions is probably best.  Add in some brain breaks and activities or discussions.