Work on drafting the Introduction section of your instructions.

Listen to the following Audio:

Remember from your assignment sheet:

Introduction—establishing the context, purpose, and organization of the instructions. The introduction may include other matters—as outlined in your textbook http://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/textbook/instrux.html#introduction (scroll down to Introduction section after the image—depending on the nature of the task and the audience.

Requirements—tools, materials, etc. needed to perform the task. (These can be included in the introduction, if appropriate.)

Any necessary cautions.

Examples of Instruction Introductions:

http://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/textbook/instrxx2c.html -- good text example; gives you sense of introduction

http://bf.memphis.edu/spectrum/introduction.php -- very good and detailed introduction; provides quite a bit of background

Excerpted from Online Textbook:

Introduction. Plan the introduction to your instructions carefully. Make sure it does any of the following things (but not necessarily in this order) that apply to your particular instructions:

• Indicate the specific tasks or procedure to be explained as well as the scope of coverage (what won't be covered).
• Indicate what the audience needs in terms of knowledge and background to understand the instructions.
• Give a general idea of the procedure and what it accomplishes.
• Indicate the conditions when these instructions should (or should not) be used.
• Give an overview of the contents of the instructions.

Now remember: you may not need all of these elements, and some of them can combine neatly into single sentences. The introduction ought to be brisk and to the point and not feel as though it is trudging laboriously through each of these elements. (See the section on introductions for further discussion.)

General warning, caution, danger notices. Instructions often must alert readers to the possibility of ruining their equipment, screwing up the procedure, and hurting themselves. Also, instructions must often emphasize key points or exceptions. For these situations, you use special notices—note, warning, caution, and danger notices. Notice how these special notices are used in the example instructions listed above.

Technical background or theory. At the beginning of certain kinds of instructions (after the introduction, of course), you may need a discussion of background related to the procedure. For certain instructions, this background is critical—otherwise, the steps in the procedure make no sense. For example, you may have had some experience with those software applets in which you define your own colors by nudging red, green, and blue slider bars around. To really understand what you're doing, you need to have some background on color. Similarly, you can imagine that, for certain instructions using cameras, some theory might be needed as well.

Equipment and supplies. Notice that most instructions include a list of the things you need to gather before you start the procedure. This includes equipment, the tools you use in the procedure (such as mixing bowls, spoons, bread pans, hammers, drills, and saws) and supplies, the things that are consumed in the procedure (such as wood, paint, oil, flour, and nails). In instructions, these typically are listed either in a simple vertical list or in a two-column list. Use the two-column list if you need to add some specifications to some or all of the items—for example, brand names, sizes, amounts, types, model numbers, and so on.