Any technical writing tips?

manwiththemachinegun

Argle-fargle guys. My brain is leaking out of my shoes.

I'm currently in a Masters Program and writing a work sample for Oregon state. For those that don't know, it means to prove my non-retardness as a teacher (which has fuck-all to do with how well you manage a classroom and deliever the material in an way that won't make you want to kill yourself as a student) I have to complete a monster binder with endless lesson plans, target goals, reflections, and state goals. I have until December to finish TWO of these mutherfuckers, and I just don't know how to organise the thing.

Bear in mind, I'm no stranger to heavy workloads, I have a B.A. afterall. But this is essentially schoolwork ontop of a full time job in the classroom, and extra time helping as an apprentice coach. Anyone have any good time organization tips or the like? I'm 2 weeks into my 15 week program and I'm at 40 pages, and haven't even written my ten lesson work sample. And people wonder why teachers complain about salary.

Lilnoobs

Can you organize it chronologically how you might teach it?

So lesson plans you want to implement in class and put them in order of the semester. Then in a separated part of the binder, put official BS like state laws, references, etc and so on and so forth.

That's just how I might do it.

wogi

Might be a moot question, but what topic are you trying to arrange a lesson plan for?

Muncie

Don't over-think it. Organize by themes, sections, subsections, and focuses. You're not writing the great American novel.

Use an institutional voice while writing. I'm sure you can use bullet points. Indicate when a lesson meets a state requirement. In the back as an additional piece of information list the requirement and indicate where in the lesson plan that requirement is met.

Build a table of contents.

Within each lesson you can organize it as:
____
Unit: The Classical World
Section: Rome
Subsection: The Rise of Rome
Lesson: The Building of Rome

Goal: To examine the earliest history of Rome; To give students insight into the forces that created Rome; To engage students through...

Lesson Plan (Textbook pp. 126-138):
Here give specific classroom assignments, give short overviews of lectures, talk about how you are going to build an imaginary city. List materials you'll need. In the back you can also put together a chronological list of materials required week to week.

Assignments:
-Build a City: Students will construct their own ancient city...
-Paper: Early Roman figures: 5-10 pages, 4 cited works. Students will examine early Roman figures.
_____

Then leave yourself a place to put notes. Lesson plans don't change very much from year to year but you need to improve them based on their effectiveness. I'm not sure how you're supposed to do a "reflection" on material you haven't taught yet unless they want some absurd amount of navel gazing.

So, organizing it:

Cover sheet
Table of Contents (with probably the smallest listed unit being a day).
Mission Statement (could include your target goals, here)
Body of Work.
Appendices (State requirements for easy lookup, that kinda thing)

BAM DONE.

What a pain in the ass. Still, if I knew a man with a machine gun was teaching my kids, I'd be more comfortable knowing he knows what he's going to teach.

manwiththemachinegun

Hey, I have no problem having detailed lesson plans. It means you can do a lot more fun stuff anyway. The pain in the ass is having to complete the sample on top of teaching four periods a day with all the class management, grading, and extra curricular stuff. And I'm dealing with teenagers guys, you know what that's like. It's rather overwhelming, especially since the class on, "how to write a work sample" never materialized since I'm in a new program. Each instructor sort of palmed it off to the next guy down the line, and the result is myself and my cohorts hitting the shiny panic button in our brains. D: We know the shit out of Bloom's Taxonomy though!

Thanks for the tips though guys, that'll help more than you think.