Eloquence

Strategies and Activity Ideas

Categories/Definitions

The sections of content in this unit are broken into literacy and social studies related categories that are lenses for viewing all information. At the beginning of the school year we'll introduce categorizing as a way to organize information in our lives in general. Perhaps our first categories will be the content areas that we are supposed to cover: reading, writing, and social studies. Whenever we introduce a new concept or text or project, we'll prose the question: What kind of information is this? Is it historical, political, creative, functional, or economical? Students will begin to keep a self-monitoring document that reflects their knowledge of categorizing. This can be done on Google Spreadsheets, as we have 1:1 Chromebooks in our classroom OR in a composition notebook. Eventually, we will establish main categories that academic vocabulary and examples fall into. My hope is that they reflect the categories of the unit: History, Politics, Design, and Rhetoric.

I'd like our students to be able to categorize their knowledge of the Auditorium Building through these lenses. We'll look at the history, politics, design, and rhetoric of the building. Each of the categories will have content-specific words that are suggested to be taught and used and referred to within their category. For example, The Haymarket Riot is considered both a historical event and a historical term. Within politics is the policy as well as the description of democratic ideals. The umbrella category of design includes terminology from the entire plan, such as architecture, plasterwork, and murals. Rhetoric holds the strategies of public speaking as well as the specific tropes and schemes. It may be useful to students at the middle level to identify tropes as figurative language.

In the direct teaching of the unit, we'll move through the categories in a way that supports the most concrete knowledge to the most abstract. This way students' learning is scaffolded. Students will explore the history of Chicago at the time, then the politics and policy of the building of a place like the Auditorium, then the actual design of the building with a structural engineering element provided by our math teacher, and finally the practice of persuasive public speaking. Only then will students be able to make the conceptual jump to see the parallels of rhetorical tropes and architectural expressiveness.

Democracy in Design

One of the unit's central ideas is: democratic ideals can be used in designing democratic spaces. In our classroom we have two very useful tools for designing a space which promotes democratic ideals: dream lab furniture (light-weight and on wheels) and 1:1 technology. As in the strategy of categorizing, the democracy strategy will be used not only as part of this unit but throughout the school year in order to create a base of knowledge that students can pull from while dealing with the content of this unit in the early spring after studying The Civil War.

Students will first have to identify the ideals. We'll begin in a simple and straightforward manner, looking up the two academic terms separately and then fitting them together: What is a democracy? What is an ideal? We'll categorize these terms and then look at the words together as one term: What is a democratic ideal? Why are democratic ideals important? What democratic ideals would you want to support you as a citizen? Students will brainstorm and then narrow our classroom democratic ideals to five.

After they are established, we will decide how best to support the ideals. One way will be through design. We will design a classroom environment and the procedures for enforcing this design. Following Louis Sullivan mantra, "Form ever follows function.", students will discuss the functions that this space must accomodate. We'll need to decide if the room remains as is or if we shift the environment depending on the function. Both the furniture and the technology need to be included in the plan.

An activity that supports this strategy is students creating a blog for the Auditorium Building to document their experience in designing a space for The Public. Staff at the theater have already presented the idea of students blogging on their website/blog. After studying the history, politics, and design of the building, students would be able to see how the design of their classroom reflected the process of designing the theater. We'll begin by presenting a prompt about democracy and design and having students respond to the prompt in writing on their computers: How are democratic ideals used in the design of the Auditorium and in your classroom?

Images as Primary Sources

This strategy will also be introduced at the beginning of our school year. I was reminded by Timothy J. Barringer, Yale University Professor of History of Art, that images can be viewed as primary resources. I intend to communicate this to students throughout the year by presenting photographs and visual art that connect to the time periods we are studying. We will look at the images as text. This process will aid in students' abstract thinking capabilities. We'll compare the information an essay gives us to the information an image

gives and explore the similarities and differences. The main question we'll address is: What is this image telling me about the time period—the people, the place, the culture?

The activity related to this strategy will help students create their own narratives in text for images. One element will be a scavenger hunt. The goal is to find as many images that tell the story of the Auditorium Building of Chicago as possible: Then and Now pictures, photographs of the creators, photographs of speeches and lectures being given, and images of the pageant "The Grand Spectacle: America!" by Imre Kiralfy, are just a few of the images I've been able to locate in exploration. Images included can also be related to the history, design and politics of the building—The Haymarket Riot, Ferdinand Peck, Mrs. Spachner, Sullivan & Adler, and the Athenian spaces the theater is modeled after.

Students will also explore the visual art of the interior space of the Auditorium Building. This consists of the many murals painted by Charles Holloway using live human models. The murals all tell a story and with the assistance of the Chicago's Landmark Stage website, students will learn the stories well enough to tell them in their own perspective as written narratives. Students will be able to write narrative text telling the stories of the photographs they find in their scavenger hunt as well.

The first step for this activity will be creating Pinterest accounts to collect the images. They will then write narratives for one photograph and one mural. The focus questions for this narrative will be: What story is this image telling us about the time in history it was created?

Eloquent Recitation

Students will recite beautiful famous and infamous rhetoric in different environments: the classroom, the yard, the train, the Auditorium, and at home. This work on memory will build an awareness of self in the physical world and voice in their writing. To begin our school year, students will watch the Ken Burns documentary "The Address". This film sets the tone for acceptance of diverse learners and the importance of eloquent public speaking. The students in the film are asked to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I'd like our students to do the same.

In the two months leading up to the content of this unit, students will be studying The Civil War. At this time students will begin to develop a public speaking voice by memorizing some or all of "The Address". This activity will create building blocks to the rhetoric that students will begin to write themselves. It is at this time that we'll define and categorize the terms rhetoric and eloquence.

Another supportive activity for eloquent recitation would be reading quotations that represent good rhetoric. I'd like students to find and recite quotations written and recited by people who visited and spoke at the Auditorium. Examples are: President Theodore Roosevelt, President William Henry Harrison, Booker T. Washington, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sarah Bernhardt, and Anna Pavlova.

Rewriting Rhetoric

In presenting the art of rhetoric, we'll read aloud and silently and listen to many of the great works of eloquence. Students will first be exposed to these speeches in chronological order through history taught in the classroom. As seventh graders in Chicago using Social Studies 3.0 as a guide, we begin the year with world exploration, move to colonial times and The Revolutionary, the constitution, slavery and The Civil War, The Reconstruction Era, and we'll complete a Civil Rights Era unit together with the eighth graders in the spring.

The list of historical rhetoric we'll study follows but some may be added and others might be taken away: The Declaration of Independence by Jefferson, The Gettysburg Address by Lincoln, The Atlanta Cotton Exposition Speech by Booker T. Washington, The Challenger Speech by Reagan, The Fourth of July Speech by Douglass, and perhaps Queen Elizabeth's Inaugural Speech. Students will rewrite speeches in their own language and their own voice. I'm leaning towards Gettysburg being the first one we try together because they will have learned the words already. It is by associating these rich words and purposeful words with my kids' real lives that will make the most meaning.

Another activity idea would be to look at the art of pageantry and spectacle in American history as universal rhetoric and rewrite a pageant. "The Grand Spectacle, America!" by Imre Kiralfy was performed on the Auditorium stage in 1893 as part of The Columbian Exposition. Kiralfy had to make the work accessible to people across language barriers. I'd like students to rewrite "America!" as readers theatre. The original text is not very accessible but the gist of the story is a comprehensive history of America from 1492-1892. The main characters are historical allegories: Progress, Perseverance, Liberty, and Genius of Invention. Liberty frees the slaves, unites the country, inspires the west, and greets Chicago at the World's Fair as the "Temple of Peace". Pageants used mimic and operatic styles. For reflection on the experience we'll have a class seminar on the rhetoric of the pageant.

The Tour

We have the luxury of the Auditorium Building's 125th year anniversary happening in tandem with the creation of this curriculum unit. That being said, there are a number of events that my students have already been invited to. These events include a musical instrument exploration day, a sing-a-long film night with "Chicago: The Musical", a Halloween parade, an architectural lecture with a focus on the banquet hall of the building, a general interior architecture tour, and the gospel jazz review in honor of MLK "Too Hot To Handel". This gives us ample time as a community to really get to know the space well.

I'd like the kids to be able to share their knowledge of the space by speaking eloquently about it. Students will be writing a speech defending how the building as rhetoric. This is a culminating activity. These speeches need to be shared and an intimate audience might be a good way to get them used to conveying their very important ideas in front of others, but without the pressure of being onstage in front of thousands of people.

One way to do this would be to have the speech be given as a tour of the space. Docents act as guides for beautiful spaces voluntarily. Often times docents are people who have a deep love and appreciation for the place they are guiding. Students will access the Auditorium Building enough to be develop this type of appreciation. It will be up to them how they want to give the tour, knowing that a clear understanding of how the building persuades the public of its unifying qualities is the purpose.