Lesson: Defining Success across Audiences

Contributed by Elizabeth Alexander, 2014 Goals: To identify audience needs and revise writing accordingly Engage in self-assessment and self-critique for more effective communication with different audiences When to use this: In a unit in which students must revise a piece using a different mode and/or for a different audience Prior Class: Ask students to bring …

Lesson: The Rhetoric of Comedy

Contributed by Craig Sanders, 2015 Summary: This lesson makes use of the medium of stand-up comedy to help students to understand and rationalize rhetorical argument and its strategies in new ways. By analyzing and demonstrating the rhetorical strategies associated with humor, students build connections with a different mode of discourse and are able to apply …

Lesson: Entering the Conversation

  Entering the Conversation Activity I. In class discussion, we choose a sample “hot’ controversial research topic, such as abortion (easy to demonstrate), and then brainstorm terms to use for searching for sources. Then, we look at common terms that come up during a simple Google search of “abortion.’ Motherhood, person, moral, freedom, murder, etc. …

Lesson: Audiences and Rhetorical Situations

  Learning to recognize, consider, and research Different Rhetorical Situations and Audiences  Context activity: recognizing that a conversation is going on For the first unit, we read six authors with varying stances on a particular theme. Students read a pair of authors for each class period, with opposing viewpoints on a particular issue within the …

Lesson: Thesis Statement Translation Workshop

Contributed by Natalie Taylor, Fall 2013 Context: In the analysis unit, we were using Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue’ and Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood’ to think about language, identity, and contexts. We had also watched John McWhorter’s TED talk “Txting is killing language. JK!!!’ They were working on argumentative papers using a …

Handout: Questions to Ask When Reviewing/Revising an Essay

Is there a clearly stated purpose/objective? Are there effective transitions? How is this idea related to my thesis? How is this idea related to the ideas that come before and after it? Are the introduction and conclusion focused on the main point of the essay? As a reader, can you easily follow the writer’s flow …

Reflection Unit Plan: Into the Wild Movie Reflection

For our final, “Reflection” unit, I decided to pair watching a movie with a low-key writing assignment in my class. I chose Into the Wild  because 1) I think it is great 2) Alaskan students generally have a lot to say about it 3) students can relate to the main character, which makes for good …

Lesson: Choosing and Evaluating Research Topics

Learning to recognize, consider, and research Different Rhetorical Situations and Audiences Context activity: recognizing that a conversation is going on For the first unit, we read six authors with varying stances on a particular theme. Students read a pair of authors for each class period, with opposing viewpoints on a particular issue within the theme. …