Speaker notes for a class presentation: template and examples

Speaker notes for a class presentation work best when built around how the talk is marked. Start with one sentence stating your central message. Then give each slide a time mark, a few key words, the source as you will say it, and the line that takes you on, or hands over to the next speaker. Markers grade what notes let you do: look up, keep time, credit sources.

This guide is published by EdCitation, whose tools find, cite and check sources and leave every word of a talk to the student giving it. It rests on five published presentation rubrics and five university study-skills pages, all read on 2 October 2026; the template, the brief and the worked example are ours. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads a presentation brief into a checklist, and Cite a source builds the references slide.

What speaker notes are, and how to rehearse from them, is in how to write speaker notes. This guide is the class version: the rubric, the clock and the group.

What do presentation rubrics mark, and what do your notes do for each?

Presentation rubrics mark structure, delivery, sources, the central message and time, and every one we read rewards looking at the audience more than at your notes:

• The Oral Communication VALUE rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (n.d.), or AAC&U, has five criteria: organisation, language, delivery, supporting material and central message. Its small print says it is meant for institution-level assessment, not grading, and should be adapted to each course, so the rubric in your brief is the one that counts.
• Carnegie Mellon's Rubric for Formal Oral Communication, from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence (n.d.), says the best talk "is not a reading of a paper"; at the lowest level, "much of the information is read".
• Boston University Writing Program (n.d.) publishes an example rubric that marks a talk more than 30 seconds outside its 7 to 8 minutes as unsuccessful on time.
• Newcastle University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (n.d.), in undergraduate criteria now readable in an archived copy, marks structure, clarity, relevance, aids, timekeeping and answers; in its first-class band the presenter "frequently looks up".
• Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in a scoring guide from its Office of Educational Effectiveness Assessment (n.d.), gives a group 85 points and each presenter 15, including "inconspicuous use of notes".

Reading a rubric band by band is covered in check your paper against the marking rubric.

Rubric criteria and what your notes do for each

How do I prepare for a class presentation, step by step?

Work back from the marking criteria, then write notes that make each one easy to meet. The order is ours.

1. Read the brief and the rubric together. EdCitation's Check your paper turns the brief into a checklist, free.
2. Write the central message in one sentence, at the top of your notes.
3. Budget the clock: about one content slide a minute, opening and closing set aside first.
4. Find and cite the evidence with Find sources, which searches about 300 million published works, and Cite a source.
5. Draft the notes from the template below, one block per slide.
6. In a group, agree the running order and hand-offs before anyone rehearses alone.
7. Rehearse against a stopwatch and move the time marks until they match it.
8. Write the questions card: three questions you dread, with answers.
9. Check the references slide with Verify references.

How should I time a class presentation, slide by slide?

Give each content slide about a minute, after setting the opening and closing aside. Sheffield Hallam University Library (n.d.-b) advises no more than one slide per minute, not counting title and references slides.

The universities split a 10-minute talk differently. Sheffield Hallam gives the introduction and conclusion 30 seconds each; the University of Kent (2025) gives each a minute and the body 8 minutes over 4 to 8 slides. In a group talk we would take Kent's minute, because the opening must also introduce every speaker, as Sheffield Hallam University Library (n.d.-a) and USC both advise. Write the result into your notes as a time mark per slide.

How long should notes be for a 5 minute presentation?

Short: we suggest 30 to 50 words of notes per minute, so 150 to 250 words for five minutes, plus the opening and closing lines in full. That is our rule of thumb, not a published one. Kent puts unscripted speech at 130 to 160 words a minute, so five minutes is 650 to 800 spoken words; notes at a fifth to a third of that are triggers, not text. Sheffield Hallam suggests one card per slide, about five cards.

Slides: Sheffield Hallam. Spoken words: Kent's rates, our arithmetic. A word limit for submitted notes in your brief wins over all of this. Whole-speech word counts are in how to write a speech.

A speaker notes template for a class presentation

The template is ours. Copy one block per slide into the notes pane or onto a card; square brackets are cues, never read aloud.

TALK: [title]                MY PART: slides [n]–[n], [0:00]–[0:00]
MESSAGE: [the whole talk in one sentence]
IN: [the line I am handed, or my opening line, in full]

SLIDE [n]                    [by 0:00]
POINT: [one line]
KEY WORDS: [three to five]
SAY EXACTLY: [source as spoken] / [figure] / [quotation]
LIMIT: [what the source does not show]
CUES: [PAUSE] [CLICK] [LOOK UP]
LINK: [one line into the next slide]

OUT: "[recap]. Now [name] will [topic]. [Name]."   [TURN TO THEM]
CLOSE: [last line, in full, if it is mine]
IF ASKED: [question] = [answer in key words] (source)

A presentation notes example: one student's section of a group talk

This example is ours, for the group brief quoted below: the second speaker's slides 4 to 7, built on one real study. Okano et al. (2019) gave wearable trackers to 100 students in an introductory chemistry class at MIT, 88 of whom completed it. Better, longer and more regular sleep went with better grades, and sleep measures accounted for nearly 25% of the variance in performance; sleep on the single night before a test showed no relation to the score.

MY PART: slides 4–7, 4:00–8:00
MESSAGE: Steady sleep across the term goes with better grades.
IN: "Thanks, [name]. So what does the evidence say?"

SLIDE 5                                  [by 5:00]
POINT: The term counts, not the night before
KEY WORDS: MIT chemistry class / Fitbits / whole semester
SAY EXACTLY: "Okano and colleagues at MIT, 2019, in npj Science of Learning"
             "88 students" / "nearly 25% of the variance"
LIMIT: correlation only; authors say causation needs trials
CUES: [PAUSE after 25%] [LOOK UP]
LINK: "So one late night is not the problem. A late term is."   [CLICK]

SLIDE 7                                  [by 7:45]
OUT: "That's what the data show. Now [name] will turn it into a
      routine that survives deadline week. [Name]."   [TURN TO THEM]
IF ASKED: "Does an all-nighter hurt?" = no link found for the night
          before; the week and month before mattered (Okano et al., 2019)

The limit line is there because the authors say a causal link would need randomised trials.

How do group presentation notes handle hand-offs?

Each member's notes start with the line they receive and end with the line they hand on. Sheridan College Library and Learning Services (2026) sets out a four-part hand-off: sum up your section, introduce the next speaker and their topic, look at them and say their name, and the next speaker acknowledges it. Sheffield Hallam asks for smooth, courteous handovers and for the work to be shared out by topic, not by time. The University of Southern California Libraries (2026) want every member to learn the entire presentation, so anyone can step in, and the whole talk rehearsed at least twice.

How group presentations are marked

The group rubrics we read mark the group and each speaker separately, so your own notes still count. RIT gives 85 points to the group, including balancing time across members, and 15 to each presenter. Newcastle gives the group a provisional mark, then may adjust it for each student by the work that is clearly their own. AAC&U recommends evaluating each speaker in a group talk separately.

One running order for the whole group

Our suggestion: one shared page with every slide, its speaker, its time mark and each hand-off word for word; each member copies their rows. If someone overruns, the next speaker already knows which point to drop. Sheridan also suggests a subject expert for each topic at question time; put that name on the questions card. A free EdCitation account can share one reference list with classmates, as share a reference list with your group explains.

How do I cite sources aloud from my notes?

Write the spoken citation into your notes word for word, before the claim, and put the short written citation on the slide. In our example, slide 5 shows (Okano et al., 2019) in Harvard, the notes carry "Okano and colleagues at MIT, 2019", and the full entry goes on the references slide. What to say aloud, and where the guides disagree, is in how to cite sources in a speech or debate.

Two habits belong to notes in particular. Copy each figure from the paper, not from memory: "88" and "nearly 25%" are the abstract's own figures. In a group, note who read each source, so questions about it go to the person who knows it.

Which EdCitation tools help with a class presentation?

EdCitation handles the brief and the sources, and the talk is entirely yours: it never writes any part of a presentation, its notes or its slides. We ran two free tools on 2 October 2026.

Check your paper, on a group presentation brief

Check your paper reads an assignment's instructions into a checklist, free with no account, each rule shown with the sentence it came from. We pasted this brief, written by us:

Group presentation (40% of the module mark). In groups of four, give a 16-minute presentation on one study habit and the evidence for it, followed by 4 minutes of questions. Each member speaks for about 4 minutes. Use no more than 14 slides. Cite at least 5 academic sources, at least 3 of them published in 2018 or later, in Harvard style, and include a references slide. Each member submits their own speaker notes as a Word document of no more than 600 words, in 12-point font with 1.5 line spacing. Marks are awarded for content, structure, delivery and use of sources.

It returned six rules:

The first three came from the notes sentence, so the checklist shows they bind the notes, not the talk. Set aside as not checked: the 16-minute task, "Slides are not checked here: “Use no more than 14 slides.”" and "Marks are awarded for content, structure, delivery and use of sources." Two sentences appeared in neither list: the weighting, and "Each member speaks for about 4 minutes." Keep the times and the slide limit on your own list, since your time marks are built on them. Theoretics QA, part of Max at $24 a month, judges a paper against the assignment's own instructions, with quotations from it, and never rewrites anything.

Cite a source, for the references slide

Cite a source is the tool we would pick over any chatbot: it builds each entry from the record the publisher deposited instead of writing one from memory, and screens that record for retraction. It takes a DOI, a title, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a web address, in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE or Vancouver, free with no account. For 10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z it read the record from Crossref, found no retraction notice, and returned, in Harvard:

Okano, K. et al. (2019) ‘Sleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students’, npj Science of Learning, 4(1), article number 16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z.

Its in-text form, (Okano et al., 2019), goes on the slide. Universities read Cite Them Right differently on naming every author in the list, so check the Harvard referencing guide before keeping et al. there. Verify references, also free, then checks the finished list.

Quick questions

How long should speaker notes be for a 5-minute presentation?

We suggest 150 to 250 words, about one card per slide, with the opening and closing in full. Five unscripted minutes is 650 to 800 spoken words at the University of Kent's rates.

What should group presentation notes include?

Your slides' key words and time marks, plus the line you receive and the line you hand on, word for word. Sheridan College's four-part hand-off is a good model.

Is it bad to look at notes in a class presentation?

Glancing is fine; reading costs marks. RIT's scoring guide asks for inconspicuous use of notes, and the AAC&U rubric for looking at the audience more often than at notes.

How many slides should a 10-minute class presentation have?

No more than ten content slides, ideally fewer, Sheffield Hallam's library advises.

Can EdCitation write my presentation notes?

No. EdCitation never writes any part of a presentation, so the notes stay in your words. Check your paper turns the brief into a checklist and Cite a source builds the references slide, both free.

References

• Association of American Colleges and Universities. (n.d.). VALUE rubrics: Oral communication. https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value-initiative/value-rubrics/value-rubrics-oral-communication
• Boston University Writing Program. (n.d.). Oral presentation rubric [PDF]. Teaching Writing. https://www.bu.edu/teaching-writing/files/2020/03/Oral-Pres-Rubric.pdf
• Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. (n.d.). Rubric for formal oral communication [Word document]. Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/resources/Teaching/CourseDesign/Assessment-Grading/Rubrics/OralCommunicationRubric.doc
• Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics. (n.d.). Undergraduate criteria of assessment for presentations [PDF]. https://web.archive.org/web/20240713124247/https://www.ncl.ac.uk/mediav8/elll/UNDERGRADUATE%20CRITERIA%20OF%20ASSESSMENT%20FOR%20PRESENTATIONS.pdf
• Okano, K., Kaczmarzyk, J. R., Dave, N., Gabrieli, J. D. E., & Grossman, J. C. (2019). Sleep quality, duration, and consistency are associated with better academic performance in college students. npj Science of Learning, 4(1), Article 16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z
• Rochester Institute of Technology Office of Educational Effectiveness Assessment. (n.d.). Group presentation scoring guide [PDF]. https://www.rit.edu/educationaleffectiveness/sites/rit.edu.educationaleffectiveness/files/documents/3%20Group%20Presentation%20Rubric%20PDF.pdf
• Sheffield Hallam University Library. (n.d.-a). Group presentations. Presentation Skills. https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/presentations/group
• Sheffield Hallam University Library. (n.d.-b). Structure and formatting. Presentation Skills. https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/presentations/Structure
• Sheridan College Library and Learning Services. (2026, September 28). Group presentations. Presentation Skills. https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/presentationskills/group-presentations
• University of Kent Skills for Academic Success. (2025, September 29). Giving an oral presentation. https://student.kent.ac.uk/studies/giving-an-oral-presentation
• University of Southern California Libraries. (2026, June 3). Group presentations. Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments. https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/assignments/grouppresentation