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1. Objective: The student will be able to understand, identify, recognize, explain, and provide examples
of various rhetorical devices.
3. Motivation: Students will need a background knowledge in basic literary and rhetorical devices, such
as parallelism or rhetorical questions, as well as the conventions of standard English and the use of
rhetoric in general, which they will have just learned prior to this lesson. To motivate them, I will
facilitate the activation of prior knowledge through a knowledge rating activity, which allows for the
connection between familiar and unfamiliar words. It provides both confidence in current knowledge
and curiosity for more.
4. Instructional materials: Materials needed include writing utensils, notebooks, laptops (for each
student), Ms. Conlons Big Book, knowledge rating activity sheets, word sort activity sheets, practice
handouts, reference handouts, a whiteboard, whiteboard markers, and the assessment.
5. Procedures:
During the Rhetoric unit, students will be presented with a list of rhetorical devices in Ms.
Conlons Big Book; these words will serve as their vocabulary list for the lesson.
Students will conduct a Knowledge Rating activity, self-evaluating which words they know,
which words they have seen or heard of, and which words are unfamiliar.
Following their knowledge rating, students will get into groups of four, and each group will
conduct an internet inquiry; they will be assigned four words to define and find an example
of.
Each group will share their definitions and examples, explaining their assigned word
succinctly and defending their example sentence.
As each group presents, students will be taking notes on each rhetorical device.
This activity will lead into a classroom discussion about each rhetorical device, especially
areas in need of clarification or elaboration. When possible, students will answer the
questions posed by their classmates.
They will then be provided with an exhaustive handout containing all of the definitions and
examples to supplement the notes they have already taken, serving as a reference sheet for
future activities.
Students will then conduct a closed word sort, demonstrating an understanding of
relationships between the words and the underlying concepts.
In their small-groups from before, students will compare and discuss their answers, paying
particular attention to any differences they might have had in their work.
The groups will be asked to share to the whole class any interesting points of similarity or
difference they had in their work.
Students will then practice using rhetorical devices. First, they will participate in a two-part
activity. On one side, they will be provided with examples, and they must determine which
device is being used; on the other side, they will be provided with the term, and they must
provide an example. In the latter stage, I will encourage students to be creative with the
sentences they create, answering the prompt: What should school be like? During this
activity, they may work with a partner and consult their notes and any handouts.
As a final practice activity, they will write a creative narrative with dialogue, in which one
character tries to convince another character of something, using rhetorical devices. They
can choose whether to present it via a traditional written form or through a video.
At the completion of the lesson, students will complete an assessment, which will be in the
same format as the worksheet during their practice, but they will do it without any
assistance from their notes, handouts, or a partner.
6. Classroom Discussion: Classroom discussion is embedded into the lesson through the Internet
inquiry that students participate in. However, after they complete their various activities, the students
will conduct a discussion on why rhetoric and rhetorical devices are important and potentially
dangerous.
7. Academic vocabulary: Rhetoric, rhetorical devices, alliteration, allusion, anadiplosis, analogy,
anaphora, antimetabole, antithesis, assonance, asyndeton, chiasmus, climax, epistrophe, hyperbole,
hypophora, litotes, metaphor, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, polysyndeton, simile, creative narrative.
8. Assessment and Evaluation: I will conduct both informal and formal assessments and evaluation. I
will informally be observing them and their participation during the class activities. They will receive
feedback on their work but will be graded based on completion. To conclude the lesson, students will
repeat the two-part activity independently, without any references. They will identify rhetorical
devices based on an example provided, and they will create their own examples of the given
rhetorical devices, answering the question Why should I read your favorite book? To receive full
credit, students will demonstrate a mastery of the rhetorical devices, both in understanding and use, as
well as creativity in their responses. This assessment will demonstrate how well they, themselves,
know the material covered, without any assistance.
Value Added: