Persuasion in Democratic Politics

Classroom Activities:

This unit will involve the students engaging in a variety of activities. Students will establish a definition of the vocabulary word, ethos. I will introduce speakers and specific speeches, including teaching the students how to find speeches and contextual information about the speech and speaker; and students will relate the speech to the organization suggested by Cicero. Students will brainstorm attributes of responsible citizens, considering their audiences. They will brainstorm topics to persuade and supporting details for their argument. Then the students will take their ideas through the writing process: pre-write, first draft, revise and edit, peer revision, teacher conference, and publish. Next students will practice speaking and beginning to memorize their speech. Finally they will deliver their speech.

At the beginning of the school year, introduce students to the vocabulary word ethos. Write "ethos" in a circle in the center of the board and in a column on the side have students brainstorm what they think ethos means. Then provide for students the definition of ethos as "personal character of the speaker" (Honeycutt 2004) and record it in the circle under the word. Create a word web and have students call out different words that relate to how they want their character to be, for example: trustworthy, responsible, good listener, hard-working, respectful, neat, nice, friendly, follows directions, etc., would be some good words to encourage students to recognize here. From the words generated on the board, students need to choose five and write a sentence or two about how they are going to exemplify that characteristic so that it will contribute to their personal ethos. They need to cite what they are going to do and not going to do in the classroom during this academic school year. This activity may require them to turn and talk to a peer to get ideas about what to write. Students should be able to identify their five characteristics and write them down, but they may need some extended time to brainstorm, write, and revise what each characteristic will mean to them. It would also be helpful to give students time to share their ideas with their peers in order to receive feedback to strengthen their thoughts as well as offer suggestions to others. Students should sign their writing as a type of contract to say that they agree to model those behaviors related to building their ethos and it should be preserved for the year and could even be presented somewhere in the classroom.

Introducing students to speeches and speakers will be a process that will evolve over several class periods and maybe even a few months. First I will model for students information and how to find information. We will read developmentally appropriate biographies of people and identify words and actions from the stories that attribute to the person's ethos. The first person we will learn about is Martin Luther King, Jr. He is a person familiar to all of the students and the story A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. is located in their student anthology series so the students can listen to me read the story and they can follow along in their own books. Next, they can work in small groups and engage with the story to identify traits of Martin Luther King, Jr. that attribute to his ethos. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an influential Civil Rights leader in the United States. "He was a powerful speaker who stirred emotions in people around the world" (Harcourt Schools "Martin Luther King, Jr.) Martin Luther King, Jr. focused on equality for all people and was respected by "political leaders in many countries" (Harcourst Schools "Martin Luther King, Jr.) and he earned a Nobel Peace Prize for the work he contributed to equality of all Americans. There is a short five minute video compilation with historical information about Martin Luther King's development into being a Civil Rights Leader, located at www.discoveryeducation.com titled "Martin Luther King" in the "Heroes of American History" series that can be shown to the students to support Martin Luther King, Jr's ethos. From that video clip students will learn he delivered that speech to over "200,000 Americans," he was a reverend who lived in a time of segregation. Martin Luther King started to pick up popularity when he organized a peaceful protest in the form of a bus boycott. Dr. King supported the constitution and prioritized non-violence. It is a great model of perseverance for the students, one of the character traits our school highlights.

Next I will introduce his speech, "I Have a Dream" from the American Rhetoric website. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech on August 28, 1963 during the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. This speech was monumental for the Civil Rights movement, which was dedicated to gaining equality for all people, especially African Americans, in the United States. Students will preview the text and watch the YouTube video of him delivering it. Even though all students may not be able to comprehend the vocabulary of the speech, they can follow along with the text and begin to relate new words with their pronunciation, a second grade reading goal. Students will build an understanding of the setting and impact of the speech. I will ask students to share what the setting for the speech was and ask them why they think the setting contributed to the persuasion of the speech. It is evident in both the visual representation on YouTube and in the text of the speech that the speech is delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, creating a connection with the idea of ending segregation to Abraham Lincoln the president credited for ending slavery.

Students will complete a persuasion graphic organizer (Appendix II) identifying specific arguments addressed in the speech. They will use this same graphic organizer to brainstorm ideas for their own speeches, but it will be introduced as a tool for literacy where students complete it with information from what they have read. This can be done whole class, small groups, or independently. Students will identify key points about the speaker that contribute to his ethos. Then comprehend the goal of the speech and the main ideas used in the framework for supporting that goal. Some speeches include more than three main ideas, as allowed by the graphic organizer and for purposes of this assignment students only have to identify three, although if they want to record more they may on the back. They will provide supporting reason for each goal from the speech and write a generalization about the conclusion of the address. Students will do this in order to see how Cicero's organization is applied to speeches. It is important to point out to them that not all speeches may follow this format to persuade, and it may also be amusing to have them engage in this same task using music that has lyrics intending to persuade. This requires students to work backwards to reduce the style of the words to the organization of the message and have a visual for how the two differ.

Next students will highlight the section where Martin Luther King, Jr. uses a technique where he repeats the starting part of his sentences or phrases, "I have a dream that one day" (American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr. - I Have a Dream). Starting to put the pieces together of bridging ethos and considering the audience, as a class we will change this text to make it relevant to the classroom and this school year, and start our new speech by repeating "I have a dream that this year..." Students will work independently to establish goals for the class for this school year related to what they want to learn and how they want to establish their ethos. Students should be encouraged to be as articulate as possible in this process and clearly define what they want in as few and effective words as they can in order to get their message across without losing their audience, their fellow classmates. Students will recite their dream statement to the class and everyone's statement will be put together in a class speech. This will be the first opportunity they have to deliver a prepared speech/short-statement in front of their classmates. If possible, this moment should be recorded and preserved to use as evidence for assessment of student growth with writing and delivering speeches.

This process of finding and reading contextual information accompanying a speech can be modeled again using another famous speech and speaker. Harcourt School Publishers' website: http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/biographies/index.html provides a directory that links to websites containing biographical information about famous people. The content is developmentally appropriate for elementary students and some of them are also available in Spanish. (Beginning readers may need another student to read some of the text to them).

To model the process again for my students, I would read-aloud the story A Picture Book of John F. Kennedy from our school library and provide for the students some background information about John F. Kennedy using Discovery Education's video "Video Biographies: American Presidents: 1929-1963." The narration of this three minute video clip gives great information to the contributions of John F. Kennedy's ethos. After listening to and watching the video segment, students will record key words used to describe Kennedy's ethos including: "victory, dramatically established his political career, future seemed boundary less, campaigned vigorously, Pulitzer-prize winning, presidential hopeful, prevail over religious issue as he had heroically prevailed over the odds in the Pacific, front-running democratic candidate, won the nomination on the first ballot, and Nation's 35 ^th President" are just some of the sound bites used in the video segment to describe the credibility of John F. Kennedy. Another tool in rhetoric is to have someone else establish your credibility for you. "Another way to pump up your rhetorical virtue is get a witness to brag for you" (Heinrichs 2007, 65). Full videos of this Kennedy's Inaugural speech, and many others, are found at YouTube.com. John F. Kennedy was a student, author, traveler, and war hero. He served in both the House of Representatives and Senate before running for President. He was the 35 ^th and youngest president in the United States and during his time in office supported the peaceful efforts to end slavery (Harcourt Schools "John F. Kennedy").

The full length broadcast of Kennedy's speech is titled "President Kennedy 1961 Inaugural Address." Students can watch the speech and discuss words and phrases he used to establish his credibility and inspire pathos in his audience. Students will reread the last three paragraphs and practice saying one of them in order to become accustomed to the style and rhythm of rhetoric Kennedy employed in his speeches. Students can also analyze the speech and identify the logos of the speech using the graphic organizer (Appendix II).

Contributing to the "Invention" of the speech, as a class, students will brainstorm valuable attributes of what a responsible citizen looks like in both the school and neighborhood community. These attributes will be listed on the board. Included in this discussion can be a sharing about when students were persuaded to do something they didn't want to do as well as to do something they knew was wrong. Hopefully not many students have experience with the later, but this is a good time to allow them to talk about it and reveal the persuasion strategies that were used to convince them negatively.

Then individually students will choose one of the attributes of a responsible citizen to write a persuasive speech about. Working in small groups each student will label a piece of paper with the attribute of their choice. Then they will spend three minutes brainstorming all of the ideas and words they can think about related to their attribute. Next they will share their attribute and brainstormed ideas with their group and their group members will have three minutes to add to their paper additional ideas. The step of others contributing to the attribute will continue until everyone has a turn to share and receive feedback.

The next lesson involves considering the audience of the speech. Students first have to identify who their audience will be, peers in the classroom and in the school as well as teachers, and they also have to realize that even though teachers will be listening to their speech, they are trying to persuade their peers. As a class we will discuss what things need to be included in order to appeal to that audience. This information should be recorded and displayed in the classroom so students can reference it as needed throughout the writing process of their speech.

"Arranging" their ideas students will then complete a graphic organizer (Appendix II) considering the integration of the parts of a speech as suggested by Cicero, Aristotle, and Safire. This will be the start of the writer's workshop process employed in the classroom.

Second grade students write narratives, creative stories, and skits and they start by brainstorming a topic or main idea to write about and record it on a graphic organizer. This is considered the pre-writing stage in the writer's workshop. Then students choose three supporting details about their topic to elaborate on when they record their story. For the purpose of writing narratives, creative stories, and skits, and in order to differentiate for both students' interests and abilities, several graphic organizers are available for them to use in order to do this. My links website, http://www.mybookmarks.com/public/msdooley_2nd, connects to these graphic organizer choices. (Click on "T Resources" and then "Graphic Organizers.") From the ideas recorded on the graphic organizer, students get "writing booklets" which I (or a parent volunteer) have created for the class. Writing booklets involve putting four pieces of lined paper together, folding them in half (11 inches to 5.5") and then stapling on the side so it looks like a mini book for the students. Students create a title page on the front and give their story a title, illustration, and write their name. They are allowed to do this at any time during the first draft, so it is not the first thing they must accomplish when they get their booklet. Once they open the book on the first page they write their topic or main idea sentence and three or more sentences about it, including the introduction of the setting and the characters in their story. Then on the next three pages they need to write their three supporting details and for each detail include three or more sentences to describe what they mean.

For the purpose of writing a speech the details will be three specific actions students can do attributed to the topic or main idea of their speech. They will describe these actions in a variety of ways to get the point across of what it should look like and what type of result it should achieve. On the next page students write their conclusion summarizing what they have told and include a feeling about the events in their story.

When writing a narrative or short story, some students also like to include an "About the Author" page giving biographical information about them self, so they are familiar with introducing themselves in their stories. This information, including what they brainstormed at the beginning of the year when establishing their ethos, will lend itself to the introduction part of the speech.

After students have completed the first draft of their stories, they follow a checklist which requires them to look at the conventions of their story and make sure the first letter of every sentence is capitalized, there is punctuation at the end of every sentence, and they check the spelling against the high frequency word list that is supplied to them in their writing folders. They also have access to a dictionary (both book and www.dictionary.com online) if they want to check the spelling of unfamiliar words. They also re-read their writing, and contributing to the "style" of their work, by revising their sentences to flow better or by adding metaphors, similes, figurative language, synonyms, and other poetic features so that it sounds more coherent and intelligent.

Once students have inspected their own writing, they share it with a peer who goes through it looking for the same conventions and then has to "P.A.M." the story. "P" stands for praise, "A" stands for ask a question, and "M" stands for make a suggestion. The author of the story has to revise his/her story correcting any convention mistakes and responding to the P.A.M. by making sure to answer the question in their story as well as improving upon whatever was suggested. I have students do the revisions using a colored pencil so I can see they reflected on their writing and made progress. I do this instead of having them write a whole new second draft, and so I also introduce editing marks so they know how to make changes to their papers. A second grade friendly poster highlighting these marks can be found at http://www.thewritingsite.org/resources/managing/workshop/pdf/editmark.pdf.

After students have edited and revised their own work, they may schedule a conference with me, to give feedback to their work. After conferencing they have the opportunity to accept the feedback and make changes to their writing and then to publish their work. Students typically choose to publish by typing their story into a word processing document and adding clipart pictures to illustrate it or by using Photo Story 3, downloadable for free from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx and adding original artwork that is scanned or digital pictures taken of scenes from around the school. Some students also choose to publish by re-writing their story neatly. Not every story gets taken to publication throughout the year, and at different times during the school year students' focus on strengthening different parts in their stories so they sometimes formulate many first drafts that may never be taken farther.

I include this information in order to share the writing process that is used in my classroom. Prior to writing speeches, students will have already engaged in this process with a couple of stories so they will be familiar with the format and expectation used for writing. Students will be expected to apply it to speech writing aligning their speech to the graphic organizer (Appendix II) to be used for writing a persuasive speech. For purposes of writing a speech, students will write their words neatly or type them into a word processing document in order to have a supporting document for what they are going to say. In order to scaffold this, some students may dictate their speech for other students (or adult volunteers) to type for them.

After students have written their speeches, they will begin to practice them. A "memory" device they may use is to "visualize the different parts of it as rooms in a house, for instance the introduction as the entryway, the narration as the living room, and so on" (Garsten 2010) or students may create flashcards or cue cards highlighting the different sections of their speech, or create a PowerPoint presentation, for their own personal purposes, not to read and project for their audience. Students will have the opportunity to practice delivering their speeches over several days and in front of small groups of peers in order to generate an ease about speaking in front of an audience specific words for a specific purpose, as well as to receive feedback about their technique.

Finally, students will "deliver" their speech to the entire class and have it recorded using a video camera. They should know ahead of time what day they are expected to deliver it so as to not be a surprise to them, and so they have time to consider how their wardrobe for that day may be used to contribute to their ethos when delivering the speech. It may be helpful for the class to have a discussion about whether they should dress up in order to address their peers about being a responsible citizen or if it is acceptable for them to wear their "kid" clothes. Since addressing their peers in both the classroom setting and by a recorded devise to project over the school news program is not an everyday occurrence for them, it may enhance their character by dressing professionally; however, it may not be necessary. I do not have the correct answer to this proposition so I will facilitate a class discussion about this idea and allow the students to decide. Some students may choose to dress professionally and some may not and the class discussion could resume after all of the students have delivered their speeches about whether or not it contributed to the persuasion of a speech.

Students will be evaluated based on the rubric introduced at the beginning of the unit. Hopefully growth will be shown from the delivery of their first speech to the delivery of this speech, the one they created putting together their own words. However, the comparison will be slightly different because the first speech the declaimed whereas in the second speech they delivered their own words. Students will also be evaluated on their written speech. Does it include all of the components outlined in the graphic organizer? Also, I think peers will be asked what they will take away from each speech, meaning what "sound bite" do they recall from it. Our society is so media driven that students are accustomed to quick images, words, or statements making an impact and driving persuasion, so the audience will be polled to see if what they take away from each speech matches the intent or topic from the speaker.

By going through this process from creating a credible ethos to delivering a persuasive speech about responsible citizenship, second grade students will engage in their first opportunity of democratic politics. In spending time thinking about ways to persuade others to be responsible citizens and listening to various speeches about it, they will start to internalize their own responsibilities in becoming responsible citizens, starting in the home and elementary school environment and over the years of their lives extend this responsibility to local, national, and global communities.