One sentence: what this is about

If you do not have the sentence, slides are a pile.

Storyteller starts where Prep ended: you can make a slide. Now you can have a direction too.

Direction is one sentence about what this is about. Not a topic in one word. The word “football” is not a sentence. A sentence is “Training in the rain teaches more than a match in the warmth.”

A subject, a verb, some consequence. The teacher wants to hear that sentence in the first minute. The class wants to see it on the title.

You want it on paper before you open twenty templates. Without it you add interesting bits that lead nowhere. With it you can delete.

Today’s product is one English sentence. When it holds, slides have something to line up against.

Example: “football” is not a sentence. “Training in the rain teaches more than a match in the warmth” is. The teacher asks “what is this about?” and wants this sentence, not an album of shirts.

Write three tries on paper. Cross out “it is interesting”. Leave one concrete one. Then put it into the title in Slides size 40. The program only after that.

Adam opened Slides and wrote slides: a shirt, a stadium, a statistic, a meme, an injury, a shirt again. Teacher: “What is this about?” Adam: “Well, football.” That is not an answer.

Ema had on paper the sentence “Losing 0–3 taught me to sub, not to swear.” Five slides held the same idea. Adam had an album. An album is not a story.

After the lesson Adam finished the sentence and deleted half the slides. He found that the sentence decides what may stay. Photos can wait. The sentence cannot.

💡

Try the sentence on a parent with no slides. If they ask “and so what?”, the sentence is only a topic. Add a verb and a consequence.

A topic is not a sentence

A topic is a box: bees, Hussites, a hobby, recycling. A sentence about the box claims something.

A school presentation needs a sentence, even if you do not call it that. You say “what this is about”. The answer must be repeatable.

Shape: someone or something + a verb + a consequence. Not a list. Not “I want to talk about”. You want to claim.

How you know a weak sentence: anything can be swapped in. “Football is interesting” is true of everything. A strong sentence hurts with the concrete: place, time, action.

The concrete fits on a title size 40. If it does not fit, it is a paragraph. A paragraph is not a sentence about what this is about. One sentence. Not two glued so everything fits.

Topic: a hamster.

Weak: “Hamsters.” Weak: “I want to tell you about a hamster.” Strong: “A hamster sleeps in the day, so I do not wake it in the morning.”

Ema puts that on the title. Slides: day and night, quiet, feeding, the mistake of waking it, a question.

Adam: twenty hamster photos. What is this about? About photos. The teacher wanted care. Care was in the sentence Adam did not have.

The sentence would have deleted sleep photos from ten angles. One would remain, and a rule. First say. Then prove. Today only say.

⚠️

Do not quote the first paragraph from Wikipedia as your sentence. The teacher will notice. Your sentence is your words about your work.

Four things you will build in this course

The course has four small projects. You do not have to do them all at once. Today you add only this:

🎯 A hobby in 5 slides

Five slides about something you like doing. One sentence about what it is. No paragraphs from your notebook.

Hobby: the sentence is the spine of five slides. Without it it is a gallery.

📚 A report

Eight slides for school: a start, three proofs, an end. The title on every slide is a sentence, not “Slide 3”.

Report: the same sentence, only a stricter suit and proofs later.

📊 Survey results

A chart from a table (not a screenshot from chat) and under it where the numbers come from.

Survey: the sentence says what the number means, not just “results”.

⚖️ A defence

You say one sentence, show proof, answer “and what if…”. If you do not know, you say I don’t know.

Defence: a panel wants one sentence. You train it already now.

Write the sentence before the plus

The program stays closed until the sentence passes a test on a person next to you. Only then the title.

Paper. At the top a one-word topic that pulls you. Under it three tries at a sentence. Each try must have a verb. Cross out ones where anything can be swapped in (“is interesting”, “is important”). Leave one concrete one.
Read it out loud to a parent. Let them repeat what they should remember. If they repeat only the topic, add a consequence. Fix it on paper. Still no Slides.
Open a new presentation Hobby-sentence-Name, or the one from Prep. Title slide layout. Into the title paste the sentence size 40, contrast from Prep. No paragraph under it. Subtitle at most a name.
On the left no more slides for now, or one empty for later. Today’s product is the title. Present (F5), step back. Can the sentence be read? Can it be said in one breath? If you run out of breath, it is long. Shorten words, not type. In PowerPoint almost the same: a title and big type.
Save. Copy the sentence into the notes of the first slide too, so you do not lose it when you change the title. Goal: paper and title say the same.

Spot a weak sentence

Spot when you are saying a topic and when you are already claiming.

Turn “football”, “bees”, “recycling” into three hard sentences. Do not keep one if it is general.
Find in the title the word interesting or important and delete it. Replace it with an action.
Say the sentence from memory. If you look at the paper every other word, it is foreign. Rewrite it in your words.

Now you 💪

I have a sentence with a verb, not a one-word topic.
A parent can repeat the sentence.
The title carries the same sentence in big type, with no paragraph.

✅

Done when: On paper and on the title there is one concrete sentence about what this is about.

What to take from this lesson

A topic is a box. A sentence about the box claims something.
Without a sentence, slides are a pile.
Test: a parent repeats the message, not just a word.
A general “it is important” is not enough.
Paper first, then the plus in Slides.
Names in the examples (Ema, Adam) are made up. Do not put your number, email or photo on a slide.