Eloquence

Strategies

This 5-week unit will be taught to my tenth grade English 2 Honors students at the beginning of the sixth and final grading period when they will be concurrently studying World War II in their World History course. Many, but not all of them will take the World History AP exam towards the end of the unit. Prior to reading Lord of the Flies, students will have read A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, Othello, Like Water for Chocolate, and All Quiet on the Western Front. Through each novel we address the theme of forging identity through the loss of innocence, the struggle towards maturity and the risks along the way. This theme and the looming reality of their History exam provide a lens through which we'll process and analyze the novel and a context in which to frame much of our study of rhetoric.

After this final unit of study, most students will matriculate to English 3 AP, where they will prepare to take the Advanced Placement exam in Language and Composition. The strategies employed are intended to support skills learned earlier in the year and to provide students with a strong foundation for further study of rhetoric that they will encounter in their next year's English course. The skills learned and applied in this unit include close reading, prose analysis, analysis and application of rhetorical strategies, and integration and synthesis of textual connections between history and literature.

Building Schema and Activating Prior Knowledge

At the beginning of this unit that includes close study of Lord of the Flies, rhetoric, and historical speeches, it is important for students to have a context in which to process it all. This context includes both, knowledge of skills as well as specific content information. Schema can be defined as "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning." ⁴¹ In simple terms, schema, or the plural schemata, is the building block of intelligent behavior. Because it focuses on development, rather than learning, it does not address the accumulation and organization of information. In this way it differs from prior knowledge that needs to be in place to appreciate the full context of whatever one may be studying. Prior Knowledge is just that; all the background and surrounding information that might help a child organize and understand what they're learning. Helping children learn to activate their schema and providing or activating background knowledge are both strategies for introducing students to new material. Many readers need direct instruction on how to use their knowledge to help them build an understanding of what they're reading. Activating Prior Knowledge is important because it helps students make connections to the new information they will be learning. One way to begin building schema is by helping students to make textual connections. A teacher might activate prior knowledge through Direct Instruction, KWL Charts, Brainstorming, or through an Internet Scavenger Hunt. These activities tap into what students already know and help them to construct new knowledge for themselves.

Modified Readers' Theater

Readers' Theater is an instructional method that connects quality literature, oral reading, drama, and several research-based practices. ⁴² This instructional strategy involves adapting prose to be read aloud in class as a script. Exposition is read by either the teacher or by students as narration, and dialogue is performed by students who assume the persona of the character they're reading. This method is different from traditional theater in that it requires no costumes, props, or actions other than facial expressions or gestures by the performers. It's a rich opportunity to bring the literature to life, to practice delivery and to emphasize rhetorical tropes and tone. Prior to conducting readers' theater in class, I will assign character parts to students the day before. They will be responsible for previewing the text, highlighting their lines, for giving thought as to how they will deliver the lines the following day. In this sense, readers' theater also provides students with an authentic reason for rereading texts. Research shows it also builds fluency and ultimately can affect comprehension through the actions and gestures developed to carry out the performance. ⁴³ The complete, or extended portions, of chapters one, two, five, eight, and eleven of Lord of the Flies are rich in dialogue and lend themselves particularly well to Readers' Theater.

Talking to the Text/Highlighting and Annotating

In an effort to create active readers, students should be explicitly taught highlighting and annotating skills early on. The procedures are introduced and continue to be developed throughout a student's progression through the English department at Mt. Pleasant High School. They are specific skills and strategies to help students interact with a text. They can be applied throughout the reading of Lord of the Flies and will also help students connect to and make meaning of the political speeches they'll be reading in this unit. The annotation guidelines are different for fiction and for non-fiction and have been previously introduced to students.

Dialectical Journal

The term "Dialectic" means "the art or practice of arriving at the truth by using conversation involving question and answer." For this unit the dialectical journal is a means of maintaining a running dialogue with the text. It can be seen as a series of conversations with the text as we read Lord of the Flies. The process is meant to help students track the changes and processes of speech communities and other themes and symbols within the novel in order to gain a better understanding of how William Golding develops these ideas. The journal can and should incorporate personal responses to the text, ideas about the themes of the novel, as well as responses to specific quotes from the text. Students should find the dialectical journal a useful way to process what they've read, to track the development of character, to prepare for group discussion, and to gather textual evidence for their final oration.

Oration

For the Greeks, the culminating exercises of a rhetorical education were practice speeches known as declamations. Similarly, at the end of this unit students will put their learning to use as they craft and deliver an oration as one of the principal characters from the novel, attempting to persuade the other boys on the island to take some form of action. Orations will be evaluated for Invention, Arrangement, Style, and Delivery (IASMAD), as well as for Arrangement, Need, Satisfaction, Visualization, and Action (ANSVA).

SOAPSTone

Rhetoric, whether crafted as a message to be written on the page or to be spoken to an audience, is most importantly about choice. Key considerations are always "Why has the author or speaker chosen to use this strategy over any other? What is the intended effect on the audience? How does this strategy help the author achieve a desired effect?" SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone) is an acronym for a series of questions that students must consider to create or evaluate an argument.

Speaker

Who is the Speaker? A Speaker aims to create a particular persona. A persona, from the Greek word for mask, is the personality that the speaker projects and that from which the audience interprets. A speaker also has a real-life background though, a personal history. Both persona and personal history must be analyzed to arrive at a complete understanding of a speaker. When considering speaker, we are determining credibility, or ethos

Occasion

What is the Occasion? Occasion is much more than simple time and place. Students should consider that rhetoric always take place within a context that influences how the speaker understands, analyzes, and generates the persona, the appeals, and the subject matter material.

Audience

Who is the Audience? Once determined, the speaker or writer appeals to the audience through the three rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. It is important to note that audience groups can vary drastically and can fall into multiple categories. Most audiences are not homogeneous, and so, belief and value structures may differ amongst members of the same audience. Students should consider if the speaker is trying to reach all audience members equally or whether the discourse is aimed at persuading a particular segment of the audience only.

Purpose

What is the Purpose, Intent or Aim? "A rhetor's intention is what he or she wants to happen as a result of the text, what he or she wants the audience to believe or do after hearing or reading the text. In some rhetorical situations, the rhetor knows his or her intention right from the start; in other situations, the intention becomes clear as the text evolves." ⁴⁴ Purposes may be explicit or implicit.

Subject

What is the Subject? The subjects of texts are often abstract, but they can also be concrete. When looking at concrete subject matter, it often helps to "look behind" the actual issue and try to assess the speaker's worldview, philosophies, assumptions —the abstracts behind the concrete. The subject is the issue or idea/at hand, not the character or specific situation.

Tone

What is the Tone or attitude of the speaker towards his subject and audience? This is not to be confused with mood, and students often need help generating terms to describe tone.