Strategies
I plan to deliver this unit primarily during my 45 minute Social Studies block for 4-8 weeks. I will also use my literacy block to supplement teaching some of the reading and writing skills for certain lessons. What follows are strategies I plan to use while meeting my instructional objectives:
Analyzing Speeches
Providing students the ability to articulate what makes speeches, essays or debates persuasive is invaluable. Part of the reason some students "don't get" formal rhetoric is that they have no accessible guidelines for explaining what makes a speech persuasive or not. Critical reading of speeches is essential to being able to critique and explain what rhetoric works in a speech. Through this process, students learn to read a speech for its denotation and connotation. Critiquing strategies can apply to speeches, essays or debates. Through teaching students to analyze speeches they will be able to better self-assess their own persuasive techniques. Differentiated strategies incorporating students' learning styles may be best suited for supporting diverse learners. This should increase students' engagement and reduce their frustrations while interacting with complex speeches. I will use the following approaches inspired from the Aristotelian school of thought on rhetoric.
Read the Speech Aloud
It is essential that speeches be read aloud by a competent reader to bring out the ethos, logos, and pathos in the speech. Therefore, when I introduce a new speech, I read the speech out loud, use a CD/DVD, or have advanced students read the speech in unison with emerging readers. It is better to give students a speech in advance and not have them read it "cold."
Audience, Timing and Setting (Kairos)-
Mini-lessons to guide students in identifying the audience and the setting of a speech are important. Students should uncover what is goal of the speaker and why is it important that she persuade her audience? What medium the speaker is using to convey her message is also critical for understanding the context of the speech?
Ethos –
After reading or hearing a speech aloud, students should determine what type of person the speaker is. How does the speaker connect with her audience? How does the speaker show that she is decent, has good judgment, and is not acting out of self interest?
Logos-
When analyzing speeches students need to determine the central arguments and describe the reasoning that supports the premise of the speech. Students should pay attention the tense used by the speaker. Does she focus on the past, present, or future in her speech? Does the speaker want the audience to reach a judgment, create a feeling about the present, or call the audience to action?
Pathos-
Most effective speakers use rhetoric to evoke certain emotions from their audience. Students should determine what techniques or words a speaker uses to provoke fear, anger, despair, pride, hopefulness, sympathy, etc.
Analyzing Speeches Using Differentiated Instructions
Because my students' reading levels are so varied, from 4 th grade to 10 th grade levels, when teaching the basics of Aristotelian rhetoric, I will have to do some of the instructions in small guided reading groups. Some students will however, be able to work independently, but others will need extensive guidance. What follows are strategies I will perform in co-operative groups. Tiered, differentiated or mixed groupings are best suited for the strategies that follow:
Sound devices
Some speeches offer pleasure to the ears. Students should analyze the use of sound devices found in the speeches—e.g. the use of alliteration, repetitions, rhythm, etc. This tactic may be well suited for auditory and kinesthetic learners. Students can even tap out the beats or rhythms found in a speech.
Language use/word choice
Students should analyze the use of language—did the speaker use strong, descriptive verbs, figurative language, sensory details, etc.? What is the relationship between word choice and the style, mood or tone of the speech? This approach may be suitable for verbal and visual learners. Visual learners could illustrate what they see or feel while hearing or viewing a speech.
Speech Organization
Students should analyze the arc of a speech—e.g., does it have a beginning that connects with the audience, does it use compelling arguments in the middle and then have an ending that convinces or satisfies the audience? Does the speech include irony? Is the speech complete? Does the speaker omit anything important? How does the speech leave the audience feeling at the end? Linguistic and extroverted learners may be more inclined to this method. Students could even practice delivering or dramatizing parts of a speech.
Punctuation/ Delivery.
Students should analyze the punctuation and its relationship to how the speech is delivered. What do you learn from the punctuations? What is the relationship between the purpose and the length of the speech? How does the speaker use pace, volume, gestures, and decorum? Spatial and visual learners may find this activity more appealing. Student could experiment with different punctuations or delivery to alter the cadence of a speech.
Before, During and After (BDA)
BDA reading strategies are designed to stimulate student's prior knowledge, construct meaning and promote critical thinking. Prior knowledge is essential for students to understand complex text. Research indicates that students with prior knowledge of particular topics remember more information than do students with little or no prior knowledge (Learning Point Associates 1995).The following strategies can be used to help students discover rhetoric in speeches and improve reading comprehension skills:
Text Reformulation
In Text Reformulation, students may reformulate speeches into another type of text. For examples students may turn excerpts of Truth's speech into a poem, or a news report. When student reformulate text, it promotes active discourse about the original text. This strategy supports students with identifying main ideas, cause and effect relationships, sequencing, generalizing and inference making. Text Reformulation can extend to re-mixing speeches. Student may re-write speeches and video record their reformulated text.
Anticipation Guides
Anticipation Guides help activate prior knowledge, promote discussion, and make prediction about text. For example, I may use a series of generalizations related to the "A More Perfect Union" speech. Students would agree or disagree with statements related to Obama's speech. Next students could take notes to monitor the issues raised while reading or viewing the speech. Students could then review their responses to monitor their predictions or determine if their viewpoints changed. An example of an Anticipation Guide statement is: Racism doesn't exist in America. Students could respond by agreeing or disagreeing. More detailed examples of Anticipation Guide statements are provided in the sample lesson plans and activities section.
Constructed Responses
As per the Philadelphia School District's core curriculum, students must be able to respond to open-ended prompts related to fiction and non-fiction text. The TAG it 3 strategy graphically helps students to Turn a prompt into an opening statement; Answer the prompt; Give details, evidence and examples from the text to support their answers. The more students practice this method the better they perform on state tests. Students could write constructive responses comparing and contrasting the rhetoric of Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech with King's "I Have Dream" speech.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers provide an effective way to elicit students' prior knowledge and assess what they are learning. Examples of few graphic organizers are described below:
Vocabulary Squares
A vocabulary square is a graphic organizer divided into four quadrants that demonstrates understanding of a word's origin or part of speech, word variations, illustrations or icons and a brief definition of a word. I will use vocabulary squares when introducing interesting or difficult terms. For examples students may create vocabulary square for the words ethos, logos, pathos. Vocabulary squares can be found on the following link: http://www.englishcompanion.com/ pdfDocs/vocabsquares.pdf.
K-W-L – What You Already Know, What You Want to Know and What You Learned
Using a K-W-L graphic organizer is a good starting point for eliciting students' prior knowledge and determining what they know about a particular genre, concept or topic. Using KWL is great with inquiry because teachers can ask probing questions to lead student to learn new things. Asking clarifying questions encourages students to think for themselves. I find that facilitating discussions through using a K-W-L chart supports both my higher and lower functioning readers and writers.
Venn Diagram
Using a Venn diagram allows students to organize information to compare and contrast speeches or rhetorical devises. Students could chart the similarities and differences of the rhetoric in the famous debate between DuBois and Washington. Students could compare and contrast the rhetoric in Truth's Ain't I a Woman and Douglass's The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro. A web-based Venn diagram is available at ReadWriteThink (http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/venn/ ). This site provides a variety of graphic organizers to support students with reading, writing, speaking and researching tasks.
Deliberating and Debating Race in the classroom
Deliberate discourse is important for classrooms involved in discussing controversial topics. It is therefore critical that prior to the preparing my students for classroom discussions about post-racial identity, that I conduct mini-lesson(s) on deliberating and debating. I will teach students how to make an argument using a model suggested by Kate Shuster, the Executive Director of the Middle School Public Debate Program. The model is called ARE. When debating in a classroom forum, there are three parts, (1) The Assertion, (2) The Reasoning, (3) The Evidence (www.middleschooldebate.com).
Modeling this approach will guide students in discussing and arguing different points of views. This structure helps students think more critically before sharing their arguments. Students may work in teams to prepare their deliberation. For examples student may deliberate on this resolution: Resolved: Barack Obama's presidency provides proof that racism does not exist in America. A rubric for assessing students' debating and deliberation skills is provided the teachers resources sections.
Multi-Modal Literacy Practices.
Many of my students are not motivated to read and write for traditional academic purposes. Even higher functioning students often find reading, writing and listening to speeches boring. This unit taps into students' multi-modal literacy practices -blogging, social networking, podcasting, etc. - to provide a bridge for connecting with traditional academic learning. The strategies that follow are suggested means for creating authentic purposes for reading, writing and producing rhetoric.
Blogging Rhetoric
Blogs provide a useful forum for teachers and students to respond to provocative topics. There are many free educational blogs, such as www.blogger.com, www.edublogs.org, and www.nicenet.org . Student could create blog posts sharing speech reviews, editorials, or news stories related to President Obama's policies on education, health care, immigration, etc. As an alternative to setting up and managing a blog, teachers can create a mock blog template using a word processing program. Students could write blog-like entries manually and the teacher could post final published pieces on a teacher's wiki or blog space. Teachers should make sure they have parents sign release forms to publish students' work on any outside domain.
Remixing and Digitalizing Speeches
Remixing speeches using technology provides students an opportunity to tap into new literacy skills and foster collaboration. Creating digital responses will allow students to used technology to link traditional Aristotelian rhetoric to themes about race and identity.
In remixing speeches, students may explore rhetoric in speeches that cover a trajectory of African American experience from the abolition movement, reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights movement up until the current post-racial period. Students may brainstorm and collaborate using different methods to demonstrate their inquiry learning. For example, students could use storyboards to decide what images, symbols, sounds and transitions they used to translate selected speeches into non-print presentations. Once storyboards are completed, students could work in groups to create podcasts, I Movies, or PowerPoint presentations of their reformulated text.
Assessment
Assessments will include an evaluation of student's activities described in the sample lessons plans. Assignments will be graded on completeness, proficient writing standards (focus, content, organization, style, and convention), as well as the demonstration of understanding of rhetoric and persuasion. Included in the grade will be an assessment of the student's ability to use internet sources, personal interviews, direct quotes, other media resources. Students' responses to speeches will further demonstrate their understanding of basic rhetorical and persuasive devices. Students' persuasive speeches and media products will be assessed using rubrics that will evaluate both content and presentation style. Presentation and public speaking rubrics are provided in the appendix. Ultimately students should uncover some of the complexities of being members of a multi-cultural society.
Comments: