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Video Library

Below are videos to support student writing, and to help students improve their essay writing skills.

  1. How To Write A GOOD Essay Quickly
    This video describes how to write an essay focusing on the standard 5-paragraph essay format, and gives writing students tips on how to get quickly organized and started with composing their essay.



  2. How to Write an Effective Essay
    This video provides an overview to writing students about how to write an essay while ensuring that they make their points effectively.



  3. How to Write an Effective Essay: The Introduction
    This video explains to writing students how to write an introduction to an essay that will capture the reader's attention and make them want to read the essay.



  4. Four Types of Sentences
    This video provides a summary to writing students about sentence structure, and describes the four basic types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory.



  5. Active vs. Passive Voice
    This video explains reasons that writing students should use the active voice, in which the actor or subject is placed before the verb, rather than the passive voice, in which the actor or subject appears after the verb.



  6. How to Avoid Dangling Modifiers
    This video describes to writing students how a dangling modifier can cause confusion in sentence structure, and explains how to avoid this pattern while also helping to correct passive voice.



  7. How to Write in Third Person
    This video explains to writing students how to write in third person, and provides examples of first person, second person, and third person writing.



  8. How to Write a Good Plot
    This video describes plot writing to writing students, and how to construct a plot in which events occur in a logical sequence.



  9. Character Development
    This video describes a method of character development to writing students, in which notes describing individual character traits are placed on a wall and added, rearranged, and revised as needed.


  10. How to Write the Conclusion of an Essay
    This video explains strategies to writing students, to help them write a transition sentence that leads to the conclusion of the essay.



Video Enhanced Lesson Plan: Writing an Essay

Introduction

Students in the Writing for Interactive Media course often struggle with writing papers. In this lesson, students will practice accurate sentence, paragraph, and essay structure, and learn strategies to improve clarity in their writing, by composing a 1-2 page (500-750 word) narrative essay. Students will upload completed essays as Google Docs to their Google Drive folders for review and grading.

Content Area

  • Improving Writing Skills: Writing an Essay

Grade or Age Level of Students

  • Higher education Technical Communication students.

Learning Objectives

  • Write a 1-2 page narrative essay.
  • Apply conventions of accurate English language sentence, paragraph, and essay structure.
  • Apply appropriate writing methods for clarity in written text.
  • Use Google Drive to submit a Google Doc for review and grading.

Standards Addressed

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education:
College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education

  • CCR 4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

  • CCR 5: Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

  • CCR 6: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

Relative Advantage

The relative advantage to the Video Enhanced Lesson Plan is that students are assigned a selection of videos that will help them to quickly understand the concepts they need to complete their assignment for that lesson. Videos can be used to help keep learners engaged, and to provide an effective learning aid that is highly motivating for students (English Central, 2017). Advantages of video for learners include:

  • The videos allow separate parts of the essay writing process to be examined individually, helping writing learners break the material into smaller chunks or sections to absorb, helping to avoid cognitive overload.
  • Many of the videos have illustrative examples of the sections of writing being discussed, so that writing learners can see visual examples of the passages of text and how they are addressed in the writing process.
  • Videos such as the ones in this Video Library can be used in a flipped classroom, in which learners watch (and re-watch, if necessary) the videos before class, then come to class prepared to write with the teacher in the room to answer questions and provide suggestions. In this way, the videos in a flipped classroom replace the “traditional” lecture, and the learners can come to class with any questions they have to be addressed by the teacher before they begin writing.
  • Learners are able to view the videos on their own time, and pause, rewind, and review the videos whenever they wish to ensure they understand the material. What was once a live lecture, delivered to students once, can be reviewed by the students as many times as they like, to help reinforce learning (Roblyer & Hughes, 2019).

Timeline

  • Time required to complete the lesson: 6-8 hours

Materials

Grouping Strategies

  • Students in this online course work on their home computer or device, or a computer in one of the campus labs.
  • Students will work individually, with one student per computer / device.
  • In the case of a flipped classroom, students could bring their own device to class, or the class could be held in a lab with each student working individually on a computer.

Learning Activities

  • Read the article: Essay Writing
  • Read the article: Narrative Essays
  • Watch videos 1-10 in the Video Library showing strategies and methods you can use to improve your essay writing skills. As you watch the videos, use a Google Doc to list ideas you have for incorporating the strategies and methods shown in each video into your writing. Include at least two ideas for each video along with the title of each video.
  • In a Google Doc, write a 1-2 page (500-750 word) essay about a controversial subject of personal interest to you.
  • Submit your essay to your Google Drive folder for review by your instructor, along with your list of ideas you made when you watched the videos.
  • Send your instructor a message through your Google doc that your essay is ready to be reviewed.
  • When you receive feedback on your work, make any revisions indicated and notify your instructor that your essay is complete and ready for grading.
  • Participate in the Discussion Board for this lesson, discussing which of the videos you watched helped you to identify writing skills that you need to improve, and how you incorporated the strategies and methods you learned in the videos into your essay writing.

Assessment

  • Written 1-2 page (500-750 word) Google Doc essay, correctly submitted to Google Drive folder.
  • Participation in the required Discussion Board for this lesson.

Adaptations for Learners with Special Needs

  • Transcripts of all videos will be provided for learners using screen readers.
  • Captions will be provided for all videos to be read by learners who are unable to hear the audio.
  • Videos will have the ability to slow down the video playback speed for learners who need additional time to process information.
  • Learners may use speech-to-text software to dictate their essays instead of typing them.
  • Learners will use accessibility features within Blackboard to access course content within the LMS.
  • Any images within the LMS will include alt text for screen readers to access.

References