Eloquence

Activity I: Pinwheels of Persuasion

You may use the pinwheel template located in Appendix B: Oral Practice Pinwheel as a graphic organizer and assessment guide at various stages of oral practice, and the template located in Appendix C: Written Practice Pinwheel for written work. The only difference between the two is in the space for Passersby at the top, because the categories there differ in spoken and written practice. The Oral Practice Pinwheel is a great tool to use during poetry recitation and preparation.

These pinwheels break down each of the four audiences we address in the unit as well as the foundation category, and they have space for students to personalize the work they need to do in each area. You could use it as a preparatory graphic organizer, for students to complete before they do a task, or students can use it as a reflective self-evaluation tool and complete it after they have engaged in an oral or written task; partners could complete it for each other in the same manner. Or you can use it to offer feedback to students after oral and written tasks.

In any event, whether the teacher has guided the student to a Pathos/Logos/Ethos focus or the student has done that for him- or herself, the chosen audience area should be highlighted or marked with a different color ink. There is a key at the lower left hand corner of each template. Students (or teacher) can also highlight or circle relevant headings in each quadrant and then write in particular feedback and things to study, practice, consider. Words to add or improve on for the Foundation can be written in the blank space to the left and write of the Foundation stem, perhaps letting one side of the stem be words to add and the other words to improve on.

Activity II: Copia

A strong vocabulary is an indispensable tool in persuasion. In the book bearing its name, De copia (in which he also wrote about the commonplace book), Desiderius Erasmus explained the idea of the copia, a tool for exploring related vocabulary in all its varied iterations to build up a copia, or abundance, of words and expressions. ¹⁰ Educators today are well acquainted with Word Maps as a way to build up vocabulary knowledge and facility for students. Here, I offer a simple template (in the shape of our beloved pinwheel) for use with students. I haven't labeled it because I find that sometimes the labels are constrictive and I'd rather have students or teacher label them as fits. But the idea is the same, the common root or most familiar iteration can go in the center, and each vane of the pinwheel can be a different part of speech, a different type of sentence, an idiomatic expression, an image, or any combination thereof. ¹¹

Students can pair up and share pinwheels, and a game can be made similar to Go Fish but using the pinwheel, so that you can see if you have the same word parts or examples as your partner or new phrases to share together.

See Appendix D: Copia Pinwheel.