Writing, editing and wrangling content
Although I've been writing content and curriculum for TogetherCounts.com over the past seven years, this is the first time I've been responsible for the entire Schools section of the website. During the spring and summer of 2018, I developed the content and curriculum for all four levels — Pre-K, Grades K–2, Grades 3–5, and Grades 6–8 — plus training modules for the Educator Support Center, at-home activity guides and lesson plans to be used in conjunction with FDA (Federal Food and Drug Administration) charts and guidelines.
Like many website writing and wrangling projects, this involved hundreds of manuscript pages of text, along with nearly as many images, illustrations and video clips. When the final web pages, PDFs and slides were all laid out and uploaded by the web developer, I decided to tally them up. The total: 676 pages of content!
Curriculum Units: 12
Lesson Plans: 48
Pages of PDFs: 440
PowerPoint Slides: 236
Total pages of content: 676
The new web content went live in September 2018 and is being used again this year in U.S. schools nationwide and by TogetherCounts.com partners including the Girl Scouts and 4-H, America's largest youth development and youth mentoring organization. The free content is accessible to teachers, parents and after-school volunteers as well.
Check it out here at https://togethercounts.com/educator-support-center/
Part 1: The Creative Process
The Challenge: Develop a new conceptual framework and lesson plans to reflect the newly expanded approach to Health & Wellness recommended by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). Customize content for different grade bands (Pre-K through grade 8) for use by teachers in U.S. public and private schools nationwide.
The Solution: I worked side-by-side (virtually, that is) with design colleague Doug Eymer of EYMER Brand Laboratories to toss ideas back and forth. (Conceptual work doesn't happen in a vacuum!) I knew he was the right guy to add personality to the visuals for maximum kid-appeal — while driving home the key teaching points in effective ways that would stick.
The New Graphic Toolset: Here's the final result, below. Called the "Wellness Wheel," this graphic laid the foundation for the curriculum units and all of the content for the Pre-K through Grade 5 lesson plans and teaching guides. Printable worksheets, also designed by EYMER (see samples below), incorporated this and complementary graphics to help tie all of the separate units into a cohesive whole.
Part Two: Collaborating with teacher reviewers, a curriculum writer, website developer and more.... [to follow]