Lesson Title:
Planning & Outlining
Grade/Age Level: Adult Learners (age 25+)
Subject Area:
Communications / Public Speaking
Time allotted for the lesson:
Total time span is five business days. One 90 minute class meeting on day one, followed by three days for independent practice / assignment, followed by a second 90 minute class meeting on day five.
Short description of lesson (write a brief, yet concise description of what occurs in this lesson):
This lesson is designed to emphasize the importance of outlining and planning a presentation, before even touching a slideware program. Reynolds (2008) points out that our first instinct when planning a presentation has become to open up PowerPoint and begin. This immediately limits our creativity and boxes in our thought process. Learners will focus on identifying the “big concept” or “main idea” of their presentations. They will then subdivide this into three areas or buckets (supporting topics). By asking critical questions like, “Why is this concept important?” or, “Why am I talking about this?” learners will begin to craft their narrative, and fill in their outlines. They may even begin to get ideas for how to relate these subtopics in pictorial form, in which case, they should sketch on paper very rough representations of their thoughts. In this way, learners will realize that they will have crafted out their presentation before even touching PowerPoint or Keynote.
Goals & Standards met in this lesson:
· Pearson Efficacy Initiative
· Planning and outlining skills
· Crafting a narrative
Instructional Objectives:
· Learners will be able to clearly outline a presentation without touching PowerPoint
· Learners will be able to divide their main ideas into three subtopics.
· Learners will be able to draft a narrative with a cohesive thread through outlining and planning.
Instructional Procedures
a. To open the lesson, the instructor should ask the learners if they have ever had to speak on the fly, to provide a thorough and quality discourse about a given topic without any preparation whatsoever. Volunteers should relay their experiences, with follow-up questions regarding the volunteers self-evaluating how they did. Next, the learners should be asked if they had to do roughly the same as in the first posit, however, given adequate opportunity to prepare beforehand. The same type of follow-up questions regarding self-evaluating should be had. This can be followed by a quick discussion based in compare and contrast, with the intent of making the content in this lesson personally relevant to all learners, and to emphasize the key concept of the importance in planning and outlining.
b. Begin with the adage, “To a person with a hammer, every problem is a nail.” Ask the learners to expand upon this. Given a particular tool, and nothing else, a person is prone to using that sole tool to solve all problems, as there are seemingly no other tools at a person’s disposal. Then ask the learners if they’ve ever been asked to “share the deck,” or, “I liked what you had to say, can you send me the deck?” in reference to a PowerPoint file. But if a deck can communicate the exact same message, what value does the actual presentation have? Why spend the time and effort delivering it, when a quick email-with-attachment would seemingly achieve the same results? Expand on the perception of slideware as the end-all-be-all.
Next, after establishing that delivery-without-preparation is not the ideal, and after establishing that a presentation is more than just a slide file, move into the main concept of the lesson: the importance of planning and outlining. Display Lesson Images related to key components in a presentation (Lesson One: Graphics One through Four).
The first step is identifying the big idea of a given talk or presentation. The next step is to break this down into three supporting areas. These are areas that can be varied in their own rights, but must still be connected somehow to the big idea. For example, a presentation on the subject of student retention might be broken down into “current state of education,” “motivation,” and “technological trends,” where each could have their own stories attached, but all connect to the larger issue of student retention.
Ask the learners for a volunteered “big idea.” Then ask other learners to volunteer possible sub-topics. Lead the learners to volunteer as much as possible, guiding them to the understanding that many big ideas can be connected to numerous sub-topics, and that the goal is to identify the three that are the most critical to the message being expressed. Collect the big idea and the sub topics on a whiteboard (virtual).
Using a standard outline format, demonstrate for learners how to assemble the outline and then begin thinking about what might go into each sub-topic. This leads into the crafting of a narrative thread. Display the lesson image for this section (Lesson One: Graphics Five and Six). Ask the learners to think about why this big idea is so important. Why should anyone care about it? Why do they? Let the discussion flow, facilitating as necessary, to illustrate that by asking ourselves these types of questions, we can get at the heart of the narrative thread.
Learners will then be told they will be given time to develop their own outlines on an idea of their choosing. Give the learners the opportunity to develop these, and then ask for volunteers to share, and to get peer feedback.
c. To close the lesson, recap the main ideas presented and discussed during this session. Inform the learners of their assignment: to identify a main topic that they would like to present on, to create an outline of the main topic and three supporting topic, and then to create a supporting PowerPoint slide (only one) to be used to provide the two-minute introduction to the topic.
Adaptations for Learning Needs
If needed, all materials should be made available in printed format (transcripts, etc.), and all web-based content ensured to be screen-reader compatible.
Supplemental Activities: Extension and remediation
N/A for this lesson.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Informal evaluation will take place through the discussions, however, not every learner can be evaluated in this manner. The main evaluation will take place formally on the day the learners reconvene to present their assignments. The instructor will take note of the description of the main idea (introduction) in the short presentation, as well as the supporting slide developed. The key criteria for achievement relates to the outline, and how the outline was constructed, and if there was a positive effect on the description of the introduction. If so, proficiency in outlining and planning will be met; if not, further practice is still required—which will be had throughout the unit.
Feedback will be delivered individually, via email, following this lesson period.
Learner Products:
· One slide to accompany a short description of a presentation, including the main idea and the three areas for discussion
· One outline, and any accompanying sketches, that illustrate the planning that has gone into the presentation.
Reference:
Reynolds, G. 2008. Presentation zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery. New Riders: Berkeley, CA.