Typography
Typography is an important aspect of the design process. Type is one of the most versatile tools you can use. You can create chunks of information that make following instructions easier, or you can use type to express emotion or enhance a message (213).
The four words I have chosen to use relating to my planned unit are: Prewriting, Draft, Revising, and Publish, four of the steps in the writing process. There are two more steps, so I will work on creating those as well. This unit and these words are intended for use with 6th through 8th grade students in an online classroom. I am partnering up with our 6th grade teacher and we are providing a monthly Writer's Workshop to assist our students in writing a grade level appropriate research paper. It will be a lot of fun to have our students involved in peer editing and providing feedback to other students in our program.
The four words I have chosen to use relating to my planned unit are: Prewriting, Draft, Revising, and Publish, four of the steps in the writing process. There are two more steps, so I will work on creating those as well. This unit and these words are intended for use with 6th through 8th grade students in an online classroom. I am partnering up with our 6th grade teacher and we are providing a monthly Writer's Workshop to assist our students in writing a grade level appropriate research paper. It will be a lot of fun to have our students involved in peer editing and providing feedback to other students in our program.
My first word relating to my unit, Writing a Research Paper, is Prewriting. I ask my students to begin their research on notecards. One notecard for each source and one notecard for each piece of information. This becomes extremely valuable when laying out the structure of their paper; it is easy to move information from one laid out paragraph to another to best impart their knowledge and understanding of the topic they have researched and analyzed.
The first draft of any paper is exactly that: a draft which can be changed. The most important part of this step is to get your analysis of the information you have researched from inside your head to a piece of paper. That can be in the form of a handwritten draft, a typed draft, or a combination. There is no heed taken to conventions such as spelling, sentence structure, capitalization, or punctuation. The important part is to get the ideas onto paper and making changes afterwords. I chose to use letters that look as thought they are in draft form. There are changes that need to be made, marks that need to be erased, and work that needs to be done before this is a final product.
For my third word, the Revising, I used an eraser to show that as you revise, you make changes. Erasers (or delete buttons) are there to be used multiple times throughout the revising and editing process.
The last step in the writing process is to Publish your work. Some may choose to publish in a printed book, which I chose as my background for the word, others may choose to publish on the world wide web. There are many other platforms to choose from for publication, but no matter which format you choose, your words are there for many to see; make sure it is your best draft.
Resources:
Lohr, L. (2003). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
Lohr, L. (2003). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.