Lesson Plans

The lessons I created all used the visuals as an instruction aid to reinforce a concept already introduced during class. You will see a pattern in these lessons, as virtually all begin with the reading of a story. Books are excellent ways to introduce topics, and young children benefit so much from Read Alouds. They are always a central part of my activities.

All my lessons have been organized to a webpage which can be viewed on by selecting the link: Lesson Plans

Facts

For facts, I made a few simple changes that I feel enhance the quality of the visual as you are first introduced. The visual for Facts is a series of example pages that are used to show the drastic difference in sentence meaning when a comma is applied. To make the Home page more appealing and easier to read the heavy text, I broke up the reading section by taking the most important section and placing it into a visual similar to each example. By doing so, it stregthens the meaning of the content on the visual and provides continuity to the following pages. I also swapped out image formats, having realize many were uploaded as .png instead of .gif files.

To see the activity, view Facts.

Concepts

This project underwent the most radical changes because I was not satisfied with how it turned out. As I moved images around and tried to make modifications, I realized that I'd missed the mark with this visual. The lesson I'd created focused on how colors relate to feelings and that in writing your voice can be matched to colors. Once I realized this, I knew almost everything had to go.

I decided to keep my "talking clouds" but enhance them by changing the words to different colors that I felt matched their mood. This was to give examples to how colors match feelings. Because this image was too wordy, I cut out a lot of text and created a second image (that would be viewed on a different page) to provide examples and counter-examples of Voice. These images had a much cleaner look and better visual appeal than the original graphic. I also incorporated a top banner of crayons to convey the meaning of colors. Thanks for all the great suggestions. I am much happier with this final project.

To view all images: Concepts - Colors of your Voice

Procedure

One of the concerns with this visual were that the images took too long to load to each webpage. I addressed the loading problem by switching out the file formats from .png to .gif, something I had overlooked the first time. The .gif images are compressed and smaller file size which should speed up downloading to your browser. Another good suggestion was to change the Default page to make it more appealing. I did this by adding another image that reinforces the Rice Cake and Salsa word meanings with some examples. I also took out italics and quotation marks. Since the words were already in Red, they didn't need additional standout effects. Another good suggestion was to incorporate more about the Rice Cake and Salsa definitiions on each step of the process, so I included some descriptive words for each page to reinforce this concept.

To view project, please visit Procedures

Far Transfer

This image for Far Transfer was to show the proportion of time spent in different phases of the writing process. It is such a simple design to start with, the changes I made were minimal, but I feel they impact the work in significant ways. First I scaled down the image so that it would be easier to view from a computer/projection screen without the need to scroll up and down. I had an excellent suggestion to consider using swapping colors to change the mood. Since the writing phase (previously in yellow) was the largest pie piece, it was very bright. The suggestion given was to consider using blue for its calming effects to indicate "get comfortable, you'll be here a while." After making the changes, I immediately saw what a difference it makes. The image is not as loud as it previously appeared.

To view this project, visit Memory Load and Far Transfer

Near Transfer

This next visual was created to show the process of peer editing. This image also uses rollovers, so to view how it works please visit the link below. Despite similar appearances, many things changed with this image. First the color background color was lightened up with some white in a linear gradient. I did this to give it a "loftier" feeling. The title bar was adjusted to better include the directions (which are now housed in a white box for easier visibility). I changed one of the direction boxes from black to purple and created a new element of peer editing: SPELLING CORRECTION. Though it can not be seen in this preview image, the rollovers applied to the image were adjusted so that it closer resembled how the students would apply corrections using circles and lines. I utlized a "crayon" look for these shapes to tie in to the fact that they would be using crayons for the activity. The text that showed corrections was changed to Boopee font, which resembles kid print, but was made larger and bold to stand out. I am pleased with the changes that have been made for this project.

To view project: Mental Models and Near Transfer

Visual Attention

This visual only received a few adjustments because I was generally satisfied with how it turned out. Despite a many attempts, I have yet to successfully learn what I wanted to do with this image as far as rollover effects go. What has changed is that I trimmed the edges of the spiderweb so that it fit within the white box. The organization web was scaled down to also fit inside better. I added labels to the organization web to better connect each part of the web with the colored boxes on the right. To view it as a rollover image, please visit my webpage, which also contains the original work to compare.

Visual Attention Rollover Graphic

Advanced Organizer

For the advanced organizer, I created a visual to demonstrate the process of Brainstorming. Originally I had a picture of a little girl that I used for each step to show consistency. In this revised image, I also included images of a little boy too. I varied skin tones to make the image more multicultural as well. The background, which was once a green-yellow-red stoplight scheme, was very bright. While I didn't think it looked bad, I did agree that it was a distraction. A white background made the image cleaner and brought more emphasis to the visuals. The last change was to stretch the image horizontally so that I could shrink the canvas vertically. This was achieved by orienting the title differently.

To view the original and revised image, view on my Advanced Organizer page.

Introduction Visual

The changes I made to the original work was first to remove the original yellow and blue colors that made the house. Though no one commented on color, I looked back thinking it was ugly. My original intent was to create a very simple design, like something from a textbook. By removing most of the colors, I feel like that design element was better achieved. One comment I received was that "flowerboxes" would be fun for the windows of my house. I toyed with the idea but had difficulty finding a good image and had less luck creating my own. I found some black/white flower patterns, so that helped push the black and white color scheme. I also scaled down the size of my image so that it would be easier to view on a computer screen without the need to scroll down.