Activities
1) This writing assignment will serve as one of the culminating activities of the unit. Students will have to write a speech on a topic that they feel passionately about. They will have to employ the rhetorical strategies taught throughout the unit. For example, they must use rhetorical devices that demonstrate credibility as well as personality - ethos, pathos, logos and persona. The goal of this assignment is to see how well the students can develop their own voice in writing.
2) We will read and study "Negro Speaks of Rivers," a poem by Langston Hughes. This poem takes the reader on a journey throughout time through a collective voice "speaker." I will begin this activity by teaching a mini lesson on the "imagining ear" mini-lesson. To introduce the "imagining ear" I will again refer to Dr. Hammer's suggestion that everything we read is behind a door. Students will read:
One-two-three-go!
No good! Come back - come back.
Haslam go down there and make those kids get out
of the track. 37
After reading this short dialogue I will ask how many voices the students hear, and whose they are. One? Two? Three? Since the students are seeing the actions surrounding the dialogue and simply reading the words from the page they have to imagine what the words sound like. Some students may hear a coach yelling at his runners. Others might hear a coach, runners and a mother shouting for her kids to return home. This activity will help students recognize how what we hear and what we read can be interpreted very differently. When they read "Negro Speaks of Rivers" I want them to concentrate on the voices they hear in the poem. Students will be introduced to the collective voice in this poem. I will ask the students: What physical/psychological journey has the speaker gone on? What voices do you hear in this poem? Students will then write a poem in which they can explore getting the reader to use his "imagining ear" when reading it aloud. Students may use a collective voice or an individual voice as their speaker.
3) Students will compare and contrast Douglass's speech delivered in 1852 in Rochester, NY regarding the hypocrisy of America's celebration of July 4 th to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Students will create a Venn Diagram and will work collaboratively with a partner to record the similarities and differences of the two speeches. Students will be guided to focus on tone, rhetorical strategies, and content. The in-class extension of the activity will be to create a poster that represents the sentiments of both speeches, highlighting the differences of both orators as well as the similar calls-to-action delivered.
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