As part of your training as a Junior Judge you will be expected to perform presentations. This may sound a little scary to some but we promise you it is not something to be worried about and in fact it is something you have probably done many, many times before as a steward or pupil judge on the old training scheme.
One thing to remember on the the new judge training programme . . . the training is about learning and not about box ticking. So presentations are not something you should be thinking about as an obstacle that you need to get over on your way to qualifying as a full judge, in fact they are a learning opportunity and something that will hugely aid your progress towards gaining the knowledge and experience you need to become a full judge.
How Does it Work?
Here is a quick rundown on how a junior judge will perform a presentation.
- The cats are chosen from the the full judges book (unless a minority breed). This may be a single breed presentation where the cats are all the same breed or it may be a mixed breed presentation where there are different breeds that the JPG cater for.
- It is envisaged that the presentation will be on no more than three or four cats but in fact there is no number set in stone, it is expected that common sense is used when choosing the amount of cats to present.
- The junior judge will present each of the cats to the full judge and verbalise a short critique of each of the cats one by one. The full judge will listen to the junior judge taking note of the level of understanding of the junior judge as they present each of the cats.
- The junior judge will state if they would award a certificate/BOB to the cats and will also place the cats involved in the presentation as if they were all in one class.
- At this time the full judge will give the junior judge their comments on how well they think they did and explain where they need to seek further help and where they did well.
- Both the full and the junior judge send in their presentation forms to the JPG form 11 JTP and 12 JTP) found here.
Please remember this is not a test, it is more about benchmarking where you are on your learning journey and where (in a multi breed learning experience) you need to concentrate your efforts at that time.
For instance you may do exceptionally well on ‘breed one’ in your multi breed presentation and the full judge may say well done you are well on your way and with a little more experience you will be ready to perform your final assessment on ‘breed one’ . . . however you missed a couple of things on ‘breed two’ in the presentation so more tutorials are needed to prepare you before you think about final assessments on ‘breed two’.
So Remember
- Presentations are a learning experience and something that can be used to benchmark where exactly you are on your journey to become a full judge – they are not a test.
- They can be done at any time. Get a few tutorials under your belt and then do a presentation, see how you do and listen to the immediate feedback the full judge gives you. You can then gauge where you are and decide where you need to concentrate your efforts.
- Although the judge training guide states the minimum amount of single breed presentations (4) and multi breed presentations (1) you can do more if you think it will be helpful.
Final advice (and at the risk of repeating the advice above) . . . use the presentations to gauge where you are at on your journey to become a full judge and do not treat them as an obstacle or a box you need to tick. If you use the presentations correctly then they will speed up your journey to become a full judge.
