Cristina Marban

Dr. Boettger
TECM 5550
1 November 2015

TECM 5550
Lesson Plan Format (Explanation)
General Information

By including the below information on your lesson plan, you situate

your lesson in a particular teaching/learning context. This information
also helps you to maintain your focus on your learners as well as the
lesson content.

Lesson Title

When to Use Passive Voice and Active Voice Properly in Your

Writing?

Class/Student
Information

Class: Technical Writing Training Course for Engineers/ Student

Info: 12 Undergraduate and Graduate Professional Engineers (8
men and 4 women)

Length of Class/Activity

30 Minutes

Overall Instructional
Goal

Learn, recognize, and practice when to use passive voice and

active voice properly which help the engineers will prepare to
write professional technical documents.

Lesson Objective(s)

The students will:

Describe passive voice and active voice.
Practice when to appropriately use passive voice and active
voice in their writing.
Analyze and evaluate documents written in passive voice and
active voice.

How will you measure

each objective?

Ask questions to the class during and after the PowerPoint

presentation about the different characteristics of passive voice,
when is it appropriate to use passive voice and active voice in your
writing, and what are some example sentences in passive voice
and active voice; short quiz (five questions).

Justification for Lesson

The engineers will learn when to use and not use passive voice and
active voice in their writing because most of them write their
reports and articles in passive voice which is difficult to
understand by most readers.

Materials

Computer lab, projector, Textbook: Technical Communication by

Brenda R. Sims (Any edition); actors (subjects) and actions
(verbs) chart.

The Lesson Plan

(describe the activities)

Why and How

(justification for activities and groups
of students)
A well-developed lesson plan includes five
sections: The time allotted for the first three
sections (orientation, presentation, and evaluation)
is generally shorter than the final two sections
(engagement and expansion).

Orientation (2 min.)
Hello everyone, today we will be learning
about passive voice, active voice, and how to
use them appropriately in your writing.
I will show you a short power point
presentation on passive voice and
active voice.
The students can take out the actors
(subjects) and actions (verbs) chart
I gave them the last time we met, so
they can use it as a guide as we go
through the lesson.
Next, the class will get into pairs and
create two tables about passive voice
and active voice on Microsoft Word.
Present tables
Take a short quiz
Expansion: I will hand out different
articles or documents to you and you
have to figure out if its written in
passive voice and active voice, and
why. Then, share your findings with
the class.
Ask the class:
What is passive voice and
active voice?
How and when do you use them
in your writing?

My orientation at the beginning of class is like

a welcome because I want the engineers
(students) to feel at ease instead of feeling
nervous, or bored before we begin to work on
the new lesson. Subsequently, I will give them
a short explanation of what we are going to go
over in class, so the class wont feel confused.
Above all, at the end of the overview I will ask
the students about what passive voice and
active voice means to them, how they use them
in their writing, and which voice do they use
the most in their writing before I start the
presentation because I know that in their
profession they mostly write reports about
their projects and the machines they create in
passive voice. Besides, from the orientation I
will get an idea of what to emphasize during
the rest of the lesson.
The 12 students (8 men and 4 women) taking
this technical writing training course are
undergraduate and graduate engineers. Also,
the engineers need to learn how to write
professional technical documents because
when they enter the workforce they will have
to write a lot reports for the engineering
companies they will work for. However, the
engineers have to learn, or review style like
passive voice and active voice before they can
start writing different professional technical
documents.

Transition
The students can take out their textbooks to
turn to page 189 to review passive voice and
active voice section of chapter 7 so they can
follow the lecture.

This transition can help the engineers

remember what they learned and did not learn
about passive voice and active voice when they
read chapter 7 before class. Also, this prepares
the students for the lecture.

Presentation (3 min.)
I will present a short slide show (3
slides) on passive voice and active
voice:
First slide Defines passive voice,
active voice, and explains the
difference between the two.
Second slide When to use passive
voice.
Third Slide - Examples of passive
voice and active voice.
After the slide show, I will ask the class
what are other examples of passive
voice and active voice.

The presentation will be about three minutes

because I dont want the engineers to get too
bored and lose interest in the topic I will be
teaching. The PowerPoint presentation I
created only has three slides and is mostly a
visual guide that accentuates the lecture. For
example, the first slide is shows the different
characteristics of passive voice and active
voice. Furthermore, the second slide is about
when its appropriate to use passive voice and
the third slide shows examples of sentences of
passive voice and active voice.

Transition
Now that we understand the different
characteristics of passive voice and active
voice and when its appropriate to use passive
voice and active voice in our writing, lets
share our views about what we learned about
the lecture so you can be prepared for the
group activity (engagement).

This transition prepares the engineers for the

group activity (engagement) and they will be
able to apply what they learned in the short
lecture power point presentation on passive
voice and active voice to the group activity.

Engagement (15 min.)

For the engagement activity, I will divide the

class into groups of two because engineers
have to work with a partner in the many
projects they create at their workplace. Also,
most of the engineers are global learners that

Divide the class into pairs.

The pairs will create two tables on
Microsoft Word.

The reason I selected engineers as my students

is because most of them do not know when to
use passive voice and active voice when they
are writing articles, reports, etc. Since, most of
the engineers write in passive voice, I want to
teach them that it is not bad to write in active
voice because sometimes the audience they are
writing for wont be engineers.

 The groups will create two separate tables

on passive voice and active voice that
includes:
A definition
Characteristics
Three examples of sentences
The groups will share their tables with the
class.

need to work with others to come up with the

best project. Furthermore, I decided that the
groups should create two different tables about
passive voice and active voice on Microsoft
Word because most of the engineers create
tables to help them visualize information
quickly at their office. Each group will have to
include their own definition, characteristics
and three examples of sentences of passive
voice and active voice on each table. Also,
engineers create tables in their reports because
it helps them and their readers better
understand the big picture of their thorough
reports. The groups can add symbols and
images on the tables instead of adding too
much text. Above all, I want the engineers to
create tables together because most of them are
global and active learners that like to get hands
on experience when they are learning new
topics. Once the groups share their tables with
the class, they will be able to see the different
perspectives they have about what they have
learned during the presentation. Finally, this
activity will help the engineers memorize the
information they have learned, or they will see
the big picture of what I am teaching them.

Transition
The group activity has helped you describe,
practice, and analyze passive voice and active
voice. Now, you are more prepared to take a
short quiz about todays lesson.

This transition helps the engineers prepare for

the passive voice and active voice short quiz.

Evaluation (5 min.)
Pass out quiz (five questions)
After three minutes, we will go over
the answers together.
I will ask the class why they picked
that answer (whether its the right or
wrong)
I will ask the class what they learned
the most from the activities.

After the engagement, I created a three minute

short quiz (five questions) to evaluate if the
students learned the material. Following the
quiz, we will go over the quiz together and I
will ask the class why they picked that answer
whether it is right, or wrong.

Summary Statement(s)
Expansion (5 min.)
I will hand out a different short article, or
document to each engineer:
Read and figure out if the article or
document is written in passive
voice or active voice.
Evaluate why the article or
document is written in passive
voice or active voice.
Next, share a short explanation of your
findings with the class:
Think about the audience the article
or document is targeting, the format
of the document, etc.

The expansion part of the lesson will be five

minutes because I will explain the activity we
are going to do as a class. The engineers have
to apply what they learned in the lesson and
the activities we did in class to complete this
activity. When I hand out a different short
article, or document to each engineer, they
need to figure out if the article or document is
written in passive voice or active voice. Then,
they each will have to share a short
explanation on why their article or document is
written in passive voice or active voice. The
engineers have to think about the audience the
article or document is targeting, the format of
the document, etc. Principally, the engineers
will grasp more when to use, or not use passive
voice and active voice in their writing.