Paula Wyatt
Comprehensive Instructional Design Plan
MEDT 7490
Summer 2015
My client for this instructional design plan is Jessica LeFiles,
an elementary school guidance counselor, for Valdosta City Schools.
As a school guidance counselor, Mrs. LeFiles is responsible for
teaching lessons related to GeorgiasCollege and Career Ready
Performance Index orCCRPI. CCRPI is a comprehensive school
improvement, accountability, and communication platform for all
Georgia public school students which promotes college and career
readiness. The elementary CCRPI curriculum is comprised of a series
of seventeen lessons or clusters related to future careers or
college choices. At the elementary level, these lessons assist
students with developing a sense of self and areas of interest,
developing and acquiring positive attitudes, and developing a sense
of career awareness and the relationship with academics and
personal interests (Barge, 2012, p.2). Recently, she has been
redesigning some of the CCRPI lessons provided by the state because
she does not feel that the lessons, as provided, will engage her
young students. One of the first grade clusters, Law, Public
Safety, and Security, covers five specific public safety careers
and is subtitled, Who Keeps Us Safe? The state provided materials
contain a spoken script for the guidance counselor and a coloring
sheet for the students.
During our meeting, we discussed enhancing the lesson by using
an infographic, a PowerPoint (with a designer created video) and an
assessment tool. I created an infographic to use as an introduction
to the lesson. The infographic contains images and textual
information about the five required occupations firefighters,
judges, police, military personnel, and detectives - and the role
these people play in keeping us safe within our community. Then, I
created a PowerPoint to be used as guided practice in a whole group
setting with the teacher, followed by viewing the infographic. The
slides contain questions about the responsibilities of people in
these respective careers. Following a second mouse click, a check
mark appears above the image of the correct answer. A video I
created, which is an interview with an actual firefighter, is
embedded in the PowerPoint. I took additional pictures around our
hometown which reflect agencies or occupations all related to
public safety and added these on a slide as well. A reference slide
citing all resources completes the PowerPoint. Please note that all
images used were found on Pixabay, are copyright free and published
undera Creative Commons Public Domain deed. Finally, I designed an
assessment handout to be used at the conclusion of the lesson that
provides an opportunity for independent practice and allows the
teacher to access student understanding.
Visual literacy, as we have learned this semester, is the
ability to interpret and evaluate images, or any printed visual
item, to construct meaning. As educators, visuals are key tools as
they provide an appealing way to engage our students and assist
them in comprehending and understanding a wide range of topics.
According to Frey and Fisher (2008), the most compelling reason for
using images in instruction is that images are stored in long-term
memory (p. 11). Multimedia instruction consists of instructional
messages that contain words (such as printed or spoken text) and
pictures (such as illustrations, diagrams, photos, animation, or
video) (Mayer, 2014, p. 385). Keeping this in mind, I agree that
teachers need to teach using visuals so I spoke to Mrs. LeFiles
about creating an infographic and a PowerPoint, both containing
images and pictures, in the hopes that these visual tools would not
only engage her first graders, but also enhance the learning
experience and assist the students in committing the information to
long term memory.
When creating both visuals I designed for this lesson, I applied
several of Mayers principles including spatial contiguity (placing
text next to the graphic it describes), personalization (words are
in a conversational tone) and segmenting (breaking the concepts
into smaller chunks) (Mayer, 2014, p. 391-394).
Although this instructional design plan was created for
elementary school students, it also meets many of the ACRL Visual
Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education including
Standard 3, which states that visually literate students will
interrupt and analyze the meaning of images and visual media. This
occurs in this plan when the students identify the occupations
through the images in the infographic and PowerPoint. Also related
to Standard 3, these first graders will study the relationship
between the images when they make a connection between the
occupations presented and the common theme of public safety.
Standard 4 lists a desired learning outcome as students participate
in discussions about images. This will take place during this
lesson throughout the PowerPoint presentation during a whole group
discussion. The assessment tool used in this instructional plan
meets an indicator included in Standard 5, which states that
students will use images effectively for different purposes. When
drawing their own image related to one of the occupations, they are
creating and using images for different purposes which reflects
understanding and comprehension (ACRL, 2011).
I designed an infographic and PowerPoint for this lesson;
however, since I have created both of these types of visuals
before, this was not challenging. I found designing this plan very
interesting and overall very enjoyable. I enjoying teaching first
graders and have taught lessons in the past on fire safety so it
was easy for me to apply previous knowledge to this plan. Working
with both my client, Jessica LeFiles, and the firefighter in the
video, Ryan Wyatt, was relatively painless considering they are my
grown children. Both agreed to assist me in exchange for me
treating them to lunch! This series of events unfolded as I
brainstormed about this project. As I mentioned, my daughter had an
instructional need and my son is a firefighter so it only made
sense to use both of them for this plan. I recently accepted a
position as an Instructional Technology Specialist for Colquitt
County Schools, effective this school year. In this role, I will
work with teachers to integrate technologies into their
instruction. Creating this plan will assist me in this new
endeavors as I encourage, support and assist them in creating and
using visuals in their instruction.
References
ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.
ACRL Board of Directors, 2011. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy
Barge, J. D. (2012, December). Making Education Work for All
Georgians: Elementary Career Cluster Activities Guidance Elementary
Career Awareness Grades 1-5. Retrieved from
https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/CTAE/Documents/Elementary-Career-Guidance-document.pdf
Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2008). Teaching visual literacy:
Using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to
develop comprehension and thinking skills. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin Press.
Mayer, R. E. (2014). Multimedia Instruction. Handbook of
Research on Educational Communications & Technology, 385-399.
doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_31
