Creating an Instructional Manual

1. Creating an Instructional Manual By: Fernando L. Argüelles

2. The Lesson: Students will create a PowerPoint presentation in the form of an instructional manual, and will present this to the class. Students will also use this PowerPoint as a method of brainstorming and organizing their ideas to put together a well written 5-step paragraph informational essay teaching others how to use a mechanical device. Lesson Introduction Fernando L. ArgüellesDe Anza Jr. High SchoolCalexico, CAPhone: 768-3888-4414Email: farguelles@calexico.k12.ca.us

3. My Expectations What do I expect to experience during this project? I expect to experience creativity from those students that will naturally put a little extra effort into their work. I expect that these students will be creative with their work, and will research user manuals on the Internet. I believe that I’ll also experience some frustration with students that need to be guided throughout the whole process, and who will need constant reminding of the requirements of the assignment. Overall, I believe it will be a positive experience since it will take us away from the routine of our reading programs and daily class work.

4. What I Learned I have learned the following from this program and from implementing this lesson: I have learned how to better teach the writing process. I have learned to show students rather than tell. I have learned to integrate technology with reading and writing by designing my own mini-lesson. I have learned to use PowerPoint, not just as a tool for presenting, but as a tool for learning. I have learned to use PowerPoint as a graphic organizer that students can use for putting their ideas together during the writing process.

5. What I Think Went Well The experiences I had during the implementation of this project were mostly positive. My students already knew how to create a PowerPoint, and that allowed me to focus on the content rather than the visual in the presentation. The PowerPoint presentations were a success for the most part, because most students were able to simplify the user manuals they found. It was a good idea to have students look at user manuals so that they would understand their purpose. The most important part of this project is getting students to use their PowerPoint’s to write their essays. The project I think is very simple, the idea is easy for students to understand, and that is what made this project so successful. This is a unique and fun way to get students to do three things: To present in front of the class, to organize their thoughts and write them down, and to write a 5-step paragraph essay. All three things were for the most part a success.

6. What I Think Didn’t Go So Well During this project there were several shortcomings that I encountered. For the most part this project was not a difficult task to complete due to its simplicity, but there were some difficulties that I faced with the writing of the essays. Perhaps it was a lack of preparation on my part that caused problems with students understanding on how to write their essays in the form of an instructional manual. As a result the first essays that students wrote were not as clear and well written as I had imagined. Although, that was a good thing since it really showed students how organization helps in writing good papers after they created their PowerPoint’s. The essay writing could have used more direction, and this lesson is really more effective if done in a class that has already been covering the writing process in depth.

7. Student Data The following two slides provide graphs showing the growth that students made from the initial essay that they wrote with little organization, and the second essay that they wrote with the help of their PowerPoint instructional manual. The second graph provides the assessment data showing the average of the students’ growth between the pre and post tests.

8. Data Analysis The following graph shows student growth between the pre and post tests assessed in the form of essay writing.

9. Assessment Data This graph shows the average of student growth during this project and how students compare with one another.

10. Student Work The following PowerPoint presentations are some of my students’ work that represent different levels of proficiency based on the PowerPoint rubric they were required to follow: Basic Sample Proficient Sample Advanced Sample

11. Lesson Revisions As I looked at the data I saw that the lesson itself required changes in the technology that was to be used, and in the rubric I was giving my students. I first realized that the PowerPoint rubric I had given students didn’t include a lot of direction as to how to write the content on each slide. The rubric for the PowerPoint focused more on what effects and visual elements needed to be included. As I started informally assessing my students’ work I began to realize that changes needed to be made. Therefore, I changed the PowerPoint rubric to meet my students’ needs. Also, I saw a pattern of low scores on the initial essay because students weren’t given much direction as far as how and what to write. Therefore, I created a very detailed rubric for the informational essay that students were assigned after working on their PowerPoint presentations.

12. Lesson Summary This entire lesson was a good learning experience because I learned that using technology for technology’s sake is not the purpose of this project. I initially was to have students create a video clip instead of an essay. Students were going to write a script that was informational and then present it. I then realized that it would be difficult for students to take the information from their PowerPoint’s and put it into the format of a script. Also, students might not have enough time or patience to work with so many different medias and information. As I was going through the process of this lesson I started discovering different activities that students could learn from. I began to see the natural connection between the reading skills and the writing skills, and I started to put them together into a lesson. Initially this was a lesson focusing on reading standards, and then it grew into a lesson with the main purpose of teaching students to write an informational essay.