Inquiry Unit: Jonelle Warnock, Acc. English 9
Curricular Topic or Text: Rhetoric in U.S. historical documents
Essential Questions: What makes us powerful?
SUBQUESTIONS: What affects and moves us? How can rhetoric
enhance meaning?
Enduring Understandings:
(What you want students to come to
understand and transfer to new
situations)
I want the students to understand. . .
1. how historical speeches impact(ed)
history and what role rhetorical
devices play in making the speech
more memorable, meaningful, and
powerful.
2. how textuality and texts affect
history
3. How particular ideas and the ways
they were expressed shaped particular
ways lead to particularly powerful
meanings and effects
Conceptual Knowledge:
(What you want the students to
know)
I want the students to know and
be able to name. . .
1. Rhetorical devices
2. What makes writing
meaningful to them
3. A claim/idea with textual
evidence as data
4. Historical context of
speeches and the effects of
such speeches
How does our past shape our present?
Procedural Knowledge/Skills (see Common Core State
Standards):
(What you want the students to do)
I want students to have the ability to. . .
RI.9.9- Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and
literary significance, including how they address related
themes and concepts.
RI.9.6- Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a
text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance
that point of view or purpose.
W.9.1- Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of
substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and
relevant and significant evidence.
SL.9.4- Present information, findings, and supporting
evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that
listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the
organization, development, substance, and style are
appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
Culminating Project/Writing Task
Project Description:
Students will be able to show
the impact of the speech both
personal and historical/cultural
consequences of the speech
through a multi-media
presentation.
Skills and Understandings
Necessary for Completing
Task:
Summative Assessment/Proof Positive of Learning
(Including UNDERSTANDING and PERFORMANCE criteria)
Understanding
Rhetorical devices
Claims/evidence
Analyzing text and making
personal connections to the text
Connecting historical background,
as well as cause and effect, to
text’s meaning and impact
A student who really understands. . .
Will be able to identify rhetoric and how they enhance meaning in text.
*Modified from Inquiry Template Created by Jeffrey Wilhelm
Ideas for Sequencing From Wilhelm, 2007 and Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Understanding and Assessing from Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Inquiry Square Elements from Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001
Performance
In the final product I want to see. . .
Knowledge of rhetorical devices in text.
Clearly stated personal connection.
Use of textual evidence as proof of personal connection.
Historical context and impact of the featured speech and how it achieved these affects.
Frontloading Activity:
(Activate prior knowledge and build students’ background information, motivate inquiry, and set purposes for learning.)
During our previous To Kill a Mockingbird unit, our essential question was “What is our responsibility to others?” which generated a lot of discussion about why haven’t we lear
activated as we begin to answer our new essential questions.
1. Start with this cartoon and have reader response activities in journals and pair/shares.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/learning_from_history.html
2. Move into a gallery walk of quotations, where students will answer these questions:
a. Claim: To what degree do you agree or disagree with each statement?
b. Evidence: What makes you say so?
c. Reasoning: So what? Why does this matter?
"What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
G. W. F. Hegel
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
George Bernard Shaw
*Modified from Inquiry Template Created by Jeffrey Wilhelm
Ideas for Sequencing From Wilhelm, 2007 and Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Understanding and Assessing from Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Inquiry Square Elements from Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana
"Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore s
wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged."
Abraham Lincoln (in the context of The American Civil War of 1861 to 1865)
“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have
passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results."
Machiavelli
"History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future."
Robert Penn Warren
(instructions/idea borrowed from Bonnie Warne, Injustice Unit, 2013)
Texts and Overview
Activities
Think/Pair/Share
Gallery Walks
JFK’s First Inaugural Address (whole class)
1. Review of rhetorical devices-marking the notes and highlighting
key words
2. Close reading of historical background and context of speech
3. Marking the text, naming rhetorical devices
4. Look at excerpts from suggestions and actual speech; mini-deb
on which one should have made it to the final speech
5. After reading TKAM and knowing history of civil rights, what in t
speech would bring hope to African Americans? The rest of the
United State citizens?
Week One
Cartoon/Quotes
*Modified from Inquiry Template Created by Jeffrey Wilhelm
Ideas for Sequencing From Wilhelm, 2007 and Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Understanding and Assessing from Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Inquiry Square Elements from Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001
Week Two
“Ain’t I a Woman” (partners)
1. Close reading of historical background and context of speech
2. Marking the text, naming rhetorical devices
3. Practice writing personal reactions w/textual evidence.
1. Watch and discuss what the video is saying and how it reflects
current cultural state- table groups
2. Personal reactions using claim/evidence/warranting language
Kid President Youtube videos
Assigning of speech excerpts:
Week Three
MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail
FDR’s First Inaugural Address
Washington’s Farewell Address
Shirley Chisholm’s Equal Rights for Women
Helen Keller’s Strike Against War
Ida Wells’ Mob Murder in a Christian Nation
Lab time- Review research protocol
Assignment:
1. Research and take Cornell notes on historical time period of
speech, background information on speaker, any impact you can f
2. With a partner doing the same speech, read each other’s notes
generate questions, and discuss what is common to both (add to
notes, if necessary)
3. Write a summary of your findings
Week Four
Multi-media presentation work
Students will create a presentation that shows:
Historical context of speech
Rhetorical devices found in speech
Personally meaningful passages (claim) with
reasons (evidence)
Historically meaningful passages (claim) with
reasons (evidence) and the historical relevance
(warrant)
*Modified from Inquiry Template Created by Jeffrey Wilhelm
Ideas for Sequencing From Wilhelm, 2007 and Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Understanding and Assessing from Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Inquiry Square Elements from Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001
Lab timePowerPoint, Prezi, Animoto
*Modified from Inquiry Template Created by Jeffrey Wilhelm
Ideas for Sequencing From Wilhelm, 2007 and Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Understanding and Assessing from Wiggins and McTighe, 2005
Ideas for Inquiry Square Elements from Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001