Rhetorical Analysis

Before students write their first timed rhetorical analysis essay, they practice with a released prompt and score released sample essays. I wrote about that process in a separate post. Here’s how I run the timed essay itself and how I grade it. Preparing for the essay Pick a released prompt that’s different from the one […]

I know teachers, including some at very competitive high schools with intensive AP programs, who give timed essays every week. I give them about six times a year. Students write each of the three exam essay types (rhetorical analysis, argument, and synthesis) twice. The first time is at the end of the unit where we

This lesson has two parts. Students read a new speech independently in class; in my sequence, that’s Harvey Milk’s 1978 “Hope” speech. While they work, I call them up one at a time with their graphic organizer for the speech they analyzed on their own, which is Carrie Chapman Catt’s. It’s the same blank organizer

After students annotate a speech, we hold our first formal discussion of it. In my class, that’s an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Then we move into a core tool for developing a rhetorical analysis essay: a graphic organizer that bridges reading the text and writing about

The heart of my rhetorical analysis unit is a deep dive into a few iconic speeches from American history. I chose these texts because they’re thematically linked. I like using thematic topics within units, and later, when we get into synthesis, I build whole thematic units. For rhetorical analysis, though, I wanted to keep the

After a couple of days of station work on the rhetorical appeals, I like to spend a lesson bridging those stations into the quiz: going back through what students found, comparing responses, and modeling strong answers. In one station, students watched three commercials and identified the dominant appeal in each; we talk through those together,

The rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos, and logos, are usually the first concept I introduce in my unit on rhetorical analysis. I use the Greek terms in class since they’re shorter to say, though I tell students that in their essays they’re usually better off just naming what a writer is doing and how it affects

Once students have the foundation of rhetorical situation and argumentation and are moving into rhetorical analysis, I like to introduce bell ringers built specifically around skill review. In my other English classes I use independent reading, vocabulary work, grammar practice, or journaling as bell ringers, and those work well for younger students, but in AP

One of the most powerful recurring assignments in my AP Language class is the rhetorical precis: a four-sentence analysis of a current news article that students write every week through the first semester. It’s compact, but it does a lot of work: it gets students reading real news, it walks them through a full rhetorical

Before a quiz on rhetorical situation, I like to give students a few different ways to review, depending on how confident the class feels and how much individual support anyone needs. For a quick, fun, whole-class review, I run what I call a rhetorical situation relay race. Students line up in rows of five, and