exposition-plan Card

Exposition-Plan Cards

An exposition-plan is a worked process for how to present a subject, and it ends in a concrete set of rules. It is not a fixed lesson script — don't pre-decide a move-by-move sequence. Its job is to produce good, deliberate presentation choices for this material and this learner, and to leave behind rules you can follow later without re-reasoning.

Write the card in this order — each step feeds the next:

1. learner-translation (do this FIRST)

Translate what's known about the learner (from the probe / progress, and whether the course is generic or for a specific person — see the course's audience) into concrete implications for presentation style. Not "they're rusty" but "they reason out loud and trust their own intuitions, so lead with their phenomena and let terminology stay loose." This grounds the ratings that follow.

2. approaches — enumerate and rate them

List the candidate ways to present this material, and rate each honestly for this material and this learner:

approaches:
  - { approach: socratic dialog, rating: primary, why: Draws out and reshapes the learner's own model }
  - { approach: a worked figure/manipulative, rating: some, why: Good for the one procedural step; overkill elsewhere }
  - { approach: plain textual exposition, rating: "considered — sparingly", why: Fine for framing, but not the spine here }

Let the concept's kind and target depth steer the first cut. A node aimed at understand needs an approach that builds the model (dialog, contrasting cases), not a passive read; an apply node wants practice or a manipulable; a remember fact wants retrieval; an analyze principle wants contrasting cases and self-explanation. The (kind, depth) pair from the concept-map is your starting hypothesis for what fits — then rate against this learner.

Why rate, not just list: you (like anyone) reach for the familiar — and your familiar default is textual exposition. Force yourself off it by genuinely considering non-textual options (dialog, a figure or manipulable, a diagram, contrasting cases, an analogy) and saying why each does or doesn't fit.

But never use a technique just because it exists. Each one must earn its place for this subject and learner. Different domains and learners call for different techniques. If mostly-textual is genuinely the right answer here, say so — variety is not the goal, fit is.

3. rules — the compiled output

Distill the above into a short list of concrete, standalone rules that will guide you later — while you're authoring material or mid-conversation, focused on other things — without re-reading this whole card:

rules:
  - Open each concept from a phenomenon the learner already has; pull the idea out of it.
  - Use dialog to surface the learner's model before correcting it; never lead with a definition.
  - Reserve prose for framing and transitions, not for carrying a mechanism.

These rules are compiled to a box rule that auto-loads while you work in this course, so write them to stand on their own. Keep the reasoning behind them here (and in the body); the rules themselves should be terse and actionable.

Body

The reasoning narrative — why this shape, and how it should adapt. Living. Use neutral pronouns (they/them) for the learner regardless of who they are.

The contains: field

Give this card a one-sentence contains: — the prime retrieval field for bbx search and listings. How to write a good one (carry the information when it's concise, never a list of parts, under 200 characters) is in the agent guide's ABOUT_CARDS section.

Templates

exposition-plan

A plan for how to present a subject (modalities + decisions, with the reasoning kept in)

bbx create <path>.exposition-plan.card -t exposition-plan

Template: exposition-plan Description: A plan for how to present a subject (modalities + decisions, with the reasoning kept in) Card types: exposition-plan

Arguments: title (optional): Display title