Pedagogical Plan and Slide Deck

Part 3. The Final Project
Pedagogical Plan, Slide Deck, and Self-Assessment Memo
Part 3 consists of three items: A) The Pedagogical Plan; B) The Slide Deck and C) Self-Assessment Memo (each described below). You will be required to post a draft of your pedagogical plan and slide deck by the third day of the academic week of Week 8 for the weekly discussion assignment. Replies to two classmates will be due by the fifth day of the academic week for Week 8. The final submission of all three items (A, B, and C) is due by the last day of class, end of Week 8 by 11:30 PM ET.

A) The Pedagogical Plan. The pedagogical plan allows you the opportunity to develop your approach to teaching and learning the concepts. Read the article from the National Council of Teachers of English’s English Journal on “Teach the How: Critical Lenses and Critical Literacy.” It presents some suggestions, yet you do not have to follow the article’s approach; indeed, you should not copy them. The article is presented as an example of teaching critical theory to an audience, especially through the development of an activity.

You should be able to execute your entire pedagogical plan in a 45-50-minute class period (approximately). The plan will be prepared and submitted as a Word document in MLA style. The plan consists of the following sections, which you may use as headings and sub-headings in your document:

Learning Objectives: List the objectives you want your students to be able to do/understand after the end of the class. You should have at least three but no more than five.

Instruction: The instructional portion of your plan should take 10-15 minutes. The instructional content should consist of the following:

Introduce the literary text. Present a brief overview of the literary text. The students would have finished reading the text prior to class.

Introduce critical theory and your chosen theory. Give some background on critical theory, in general. Then, summarize the basic concepts of the theory you have chosen, placing it in the context of literary theory, and describe why you chose that particular critical approach.

Statement of thesis and supporting points. Your polished thesis statement must be stated in one sentence. The thesis statement must explicitly give the WHY and the HOW for your theory application to the text. Supporting points should follow, including brief textual examples. Provide citations.

Terminology. List relevant terminology, including definitions. Include any words relevant to your chosen theory and literary analysis. Refer back to your Audience Analysis to consider what they may know and not know. Use material from the course’s Learning Resources and your Annotated Bibliography. Provide citations.

Activity: The activity should take 10-15 minutes. Your activity should engage the students while allowing them to apply the theory to the text. Write out the activity step-by-step in your plan. If any special materials will be needed for the activity, please also note them. Allow time for the students to share their activity results with the rest of the class. Break down the activity into timed portions.

Follow-up Questions: The follow-up portion of the activity should take around 5-10 minutes. Construct 5 follow-up questions to ask of the students after the activity. The questions should help the students understand what they just did. Provide sample answers of your own in case you may need them.

B) The Slide Deck. The slide deck (prepared in PowerPoint, Google Slides, Prezi, e.g.) should consist of 5-8 content slides (excluding title slide and Works Cited slide). The slides are meant to guide students throughout the class period, through both the instructional portion and the activity portion. The content should be displayed in an engaging and visual format, without reliance on a lot of text. Statements should not be copied and pasted from the pedagogical plan onto slides. Though your activity is detailed step-by-step in the pedagogical plan, it needs to be converted into a presentation form for the audience. You may use the notes feature in your slide software in order to include engaging or original “script” – things you would say while presenting the slides. The activity is meant to be an interactive learning experience, so the slides should help facilitate that interaction in a live classroom setting.

Some resources for creating slide decks are included below. You can also convert the PPT to PDF format, which can display your notes and slides side-by-side. Presenters sometimes print the PDF and distribute it as handouts.

C) The Self-Assessment. In a separate short memorandum, explain what you learned in the development of this project and how it reflects what you take away from the course. While you should touch on all parts of the project, do not simply copy and paste sections from the plan. The memo may be written in your own, first-person voice, reflecting upon your learning process. Consider also how the work done toward this project may assist you in your future academic or professional career. The self-assessment document should be formatted in MLA style, and completed in approximately 250-500 words.

Resources to help you with the project:

Sample PPT with Notes

LinkedIn Learning’s 5 Best Practices for Making Awesome PowerPoint Slides

Good example of a slide presentation on literary analysis

Convert Slide Text to a SmartArt Graphic