Emily Atkins

MEDT: 7490 Visual and Media Literacy for Teaching and Learning

Comprehensive Instructional Design Plan

Client: Michele Bice (michele.bice@cobbk12.org)

Position: 3rd Grade Teacher at King Springs Elementary
Employer: Cobb County School District
Georgia Certification number: 1287252

Instructional Problem

Michele’s problem is that this past school year (’17-’18) the state of Georgia changed

their Social Studies standards. However, Cobb County did not adopt new curriculum for the new

standards, which is VERY different for 3rd grade. This has left many teachers without any

instructional materials. One of the new standards pertains to learning about early European

explorers. She has requested materials in assisting her teaching one of these explorers.

Michele would like an introductory lesson for one of the explorers. I would like to create

visual instructional materials that would be high interest for the students to introduce Christopher

Columbus and keep students engaged. I would like to use comics, infographics, PowerPoint, and

original art to help engage students and introduce lessons on Christopher Columbus.

Georgia Standards of Excellence:

SS3H2 Describe European exploration in North America.

a. Describe the reasons for and obstacles to the exploration of North America.
 b. Describe the accomplishments of: John Cabot (England), Vasco Núñez de Balboa

(Spain), Hernando de Soto (Spain), Christopher Columbus (Spain), Henry Hudson

(The Netherlands), and Jacques Cartier (France).

c. Describe examples of cooperation and conflict between European explorers and

American Indians.

Instructional Model

I am used the ADDIE instructional design model to design my instruction. I began with

Analysis. After meeting with my client I knew the standards she wanted me to use for

instruction and her instructional goals for my work. She then gave me information about the

learners in her classroom. She has a 3rd grade classroom of mixed ability that contains general

education students, gifted students, and students who are labeled EIP for both reading and math.

Next, I began working on the design part of the process. I decided that I wanted to

provide Michele with a unit that included a visual introduction/hook for each element of the

standard Michele provided. I felt the visual hook could be something children’s could reference

and help jog their memory of the content of the lesson that would follow. I wanted to use an

image rich PowerPoint to discuss Columbus’ reasons and obstacles for exploration, an

infographic timeline to address Columbus’ accomplishments, and a comic strip to begin

discussion on Columbus’ relationship with the Native Americans. I began to plan out what I felt

needed to be included in each artifact.

Then, I began to develop the materials needed. I did research on Christopher Columbus

and used the Georgia Standards of Excellence to decide what information needed to be included
in my unit of study. I used canva.com to create my timeline infographic, I used Microsoft

PowerPoint for my PowerPoint, and pixton.com to create my comic strip. All images were

found through creativecommons.com.

Since this assignment was done during the summer, for the Implementation part of the

process, the lesson and artifacts were sent to Michele. I also sent her information on how I

thought the materials could be used to best enhance her lessons. I let her know to let me know if

she had any questions or any suggestions for bettering the artifacts.

Finally, I looked at Evaluation. Since my goal was to give Michele lessons with

introductions and hooks to help engage students, I will determine my success formatively. When

the material is presented to the students, Michele will note if the lesson and artifacts created lead

to greater student engagement, using the past year as a comparison.

Description of Redesigned Lesson

This standard and its elements are completely new to 3rd grade social studies. Michele

was not given a lesson to use because the county has yet to adopt new curriculum that meets the

new standards. However, Michele states she was given a 4th grade text which touches on the

new content, however it is text heavy and above her students’ reading level, additional she was

only give one copy as a teacher reference. I found that students had no prior knowledge of

European explorers from a classroom setting and that had some knowledge of American Indian

life previous to the European explorers coming to America.

Assessment

Students will be give and pre-test before the unit begins and post-test upon the

completion of the unit to assess their learning.

 Explanation of Learning

While working on this assignment I tried to keep several things in mind. First, I focused

on the importance of Dual Coding. Dual Coding is the understanding that students learn and

retain information better when the information can be stored in different areas of the brain.

Adding images to text is one way to support this. I wanted to make sure I had images to support

all my most important information to help the students retain information. Secondly, I focused

on the Principles of Multimedia Learning. These are rules to follow when designing materials

for instruction. I wanted to make sure that all my artifacts and their images were helpful and not

hurtful to the learning process. I did this by making sure that I didn’t overload on text and

images. I also made sure that the text and images were simultaneously presented and were

presented together in close proximity, supporting the Spatial Contiguity and Temporal

Contiguity Principles. I also make sure that my slides were free of extraneous words and images

to increase clarity, supporting the Coherence Principle.

Just keeping a focus on these two things, Dual Coding and the Principles of Multimedia

Learning help me stay on track and produce thoughtful and useful artifacts for my client.

ACRL Standards

My plan focuses on Standard 5: The visually literate student uses images and visual

media effectively (ACRL, 2018). The first performance indicator states that images should be

used effectively for different purposes. My artifacts were placed thoughtfully and for a variety

of purposes. One example is in my infographic; symbols were added next to each headings to

assist struggling readers in finding information they were looking for quickly (baby for birth,

money for funding information, etc). While a portion of the portrait of Columbus was used as
more of a visual impact. Performance indicator 2 states that technology is used effectively to

work with images. This was achieved through all three artifacts. Throughout, images had to be

altered by size, color, and cropping to achieve the final product I was looking for. Layout was

also important in the creating of the PowerPoint and Infographic. Performance indicator 3 states

that creativity, problem solving, and experimentation should be used to incorporate images into

projects. The best example of this is in my PowerPoint. Often, the struggle with using images

when teaching history is that there is a lack of photographs and primary sources to show

students. I decided to use a collection of paintings and drawings that showed the artists’

interpretations of events surrounding Columbus. The last performance indicator states that

images should communicate effectively with and about images. This was done by the addition

of text and captions throughout the three artifacts to help convey information about Christopher

Columbus.

References

ACRL. (2018, March 09). ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy

Artifacts

*All images are subject of fair use through the website www.creativecommon.com

1. PowerPoint Slides

2. Infographic Timeline

3. Comic Strip
This plan and artifacts can also be found using the following link:
https://eatkinsmedialit.weebly.com/assignment-8.html