Rhetoric is the study and art of writing and speaking persuasively. Its aim is to inform, educate, persuade or motivate specific audiences in specific situations. It originates from Aristotle and the time of the ancient Greeks.
According to Aristotle, there are three appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. They are modes of persuasion used to convince an audience.
Ethos: your credibility and character
Pathos: emotional bond with your listeners
Logos: logical and rational arguments
I decided to scaffold this lesson into my "War Horse"/"Truce" unit in order to have students better understand the historical and rhetorical importance of propaganda (rhetoric: ethos, pathos, logos) use during WW1 because it is the setting for each anchor text in this unit. The use of propaganda and rhetorical devices during WW1 were prevalent and popular for that time period and played a significant role during the war.
This lesson's learning outcome is: "To define and identify persuasive techniques."
This lesson's objective is: "Understand and analyze rhetoric."
This unit's essential question is: "How do circumstances affect people doing the right thing?"
For this lesson, I decided to lead my students with a "Quickwrite" question as their schema activator/bell ringer to facilitate their thinking and knowledge of Rhetoric.
"What are some ways you can persuade people? Thinking about the commercials you have seen, how do they get you to want their product or service?"
After allowing time (5 minutes) for my students to write their responses, I then ask them to pair with a partner sitting next to them and share what they wrote [utilizing the think, pair, share teaching strategy here]. Once the students have had enough time discussing their thoughts and ideas about the prompt, I ask them to share out in a large group discussion before moving on with the lesson.
Next, I have students looking at their "Rhetoric in WW1 Posters" PowerPoint (which I have linked below). As the students look throughout the slides on the PowerPoint posted to Google Classroom, I will post this video for them to watch and write down examples of each rhetoric term as a formative assessment for today's lesson.
After watching the video, I ask students to tell me what they notice in the first two slides, noting how the soldiers outfits differ, the year labeled on one poster, the words and imagery used for each to depict varying aspects of war. As we discuss these concepts in class, I ask students to label what we talk about and what they notice in the slide on the PowerPoint before moving on in the lesson.
As the last part of this lesson, I ask students to finish filling out the rest of the posters listed on the slides in the PowerPoint independently before turning it in on Google Classroom as their formative assessment for the day.
After teaching this lesson with my eighth grade students at Woodland Jr. High School, I realized what the students most loved about this lesson was the relevant and relatable video they watched that depicted the every day use of ethos, pathos, and logos devices in popular and current commercials. The students recognized all of the commercials shown and could identify each rhetorical device being used within it based off of their own t.v. viewing experiences. I found that this quality and concept being used in my lesson definitely made the learning aspect of rhetorical devices more enjoyable and memorable for the students based on their responses in class, and highly recommend for other teachers to utilize this lesson plan in the future.
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