Before Instruction: The Instructor has already lectured on Pre-writing strategies, including Freewriting, Mapping, Listing, and outlining.  

Introduction: The instructor reviews the Prewriting strategies listed above and talks to students about creating a presentation using Google Slides or PowerPoint.   As not all students have PowerPoint, the instructor uses Google Slides to teach a new prewriting strategy for their Informative Essay. 

Activity 1.  Watch TedTalk “ How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint.”  The instructor will address the six things that Phillips looks for in PowerPoint presentations. 

• One message per slide 

• High Contrast Slides 

• Make sure that the focus is larger in size than everything else. 

• Avoid sentences.  The speaker is the presentation, not the PowerPoint

• Use a dark background 

• At most six objects per slide. 

The instructor then connects the “Death by PowerPoint” talk to the projects the students will start on “Conspiracy Theories.”  Discussion ensues about how to organize the PowerPoint.   The instructor will encourage all students to pretend like each slide is a paragraph and to add information on each topic to a new slide.  

Activity 2:  Students are guided to the Library page in order to find three to six sources that discuss their topic.  Students are asked to develop a research question; for example: “Is the Moon Landing Real?”

Activity 3: The instructor explains some basic places to research conspiracy theories on the internet.   The instructor states several times that Wikipedia is not a source.   The instructor goes to the Wikipedia “Conspiracy List” page and shows all students how to find the articles attached to the footnotes.   We discuss several conspiracies.  

Activity 4: Students spend time writing and creating their slideshows.  If they do not finish in class, they must complete it at home.  

Day #2 & #3

Activity #1: Students are asked to present their “Mostly complete” drafts of a PowerPoint in class.   They are evaluated on their presence and content.  Approximately seven students will present each class period. 

Activity #2: All students will be required to evaluate the presenter’s content by giving a “Glow” and a “Grow” on a discussion board based on the topics that their peers present. 

Conclusion: Students take the PowerPoint and the ideas from the questions they were asked in class and create their first draft of their Informative Essay. At this point, it is already organized and thought through, so they have an easier time writing it in an essay form.   

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Rubric

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