Curriculum Unit: Expository Writing

Amanda Jenkins Eng. 409.05 05/05/07 Curriculum Unit: Expository Writing

Theoretical Overview: The word rhetoric, when mentioned, normally makes us think of a word that we heard in college that we never really received a clear-cut definition for; however, for this curriculum unit, you will need some background knowledge regarding the term rhetoric.

Rhetoric, in the modern approach, contains four elements - three positions and one medium. The first position is the author, which the person who writes what we are reading, viewing, etc. or the agent of the production. The second position is the audience. This position is the reader, the viewer, the user, the jury, or the judge of the production. The third position is the position of value to which the author refers to within his/her piece. This could range from economic well-being, moral goodness, physical health, community solidarity, or anything else that has worth to one’s life. The author will communicate to the audience through a medium. The medium can range from spoken language, writing, radio, television, email, etc., and through this medium, the author will appeal to a value or multiple values. However, in order to be successful, the author must have all three aligned.

In addition, modern rhetoric also includes the aspect of visual rhetoric. Visual rhetoric includes color, pictures, layout, or anything that we can see that may influence the audience. Visual rhetoric may be paired with spoken or written rhetoric to make a bigger impact. Visual rhetoric is something that is relatively new. Classical rhetoric didn’t include this and focused more on choosing their words with their audience and occasion in mind. Most people would think of classical rhetoric when they hear the words ethos (appeals to character or the author’s credibility), pathos (how does it make you feel?), and logos (what is logical about the argument to the audience?). However, visual rhetoric, will also play apart in this curriculum unit.

As the unit begins, students are given a day to work with rhetoric again. There is a powerpoint presentation in which students will be given working definitions of what the will be asked to recognize, analyze, and compose throughout this unit. As you go through the powerpoint, please remember they are inquisitive. They like to ask questions, debate, and wonder. Please allow them to do so, but also make sure you stress they need to listen to one another’s opinions. They will need to know them for later use in this unit.

On day two, they will look at expository writing and analyze it. Students will take their notes and look at some editorals. They will analyze the editorals and answer questions concerning audience, purpose, value, and medium. Students will find that expository writing has a purpose, an audience, appeals to a value, and has some forms of mediums. They will look at the language they used and ask themselves who is it targeted towards? Who would most likely understand this article? Who reads this publication? By answering these types of questions, students are exploring and analyzing rhetoric.

On day three, you will read two books aloud to the students. The Three Little Pigs and The True Sotry of the 3 Little Pigs. While you are reading, students will be paying attention to the spoken or written word and the pictures. They will need to ask themselves what pictures do they see? What colors are used? What emotions are felt by the audience when seeing the pictures? Who is the book targeted towards to by the pictures? Discussion is a part of rhetoric and the students will have a lot to say about these subjects. Please let me discuss these questions, formats, and springboard ideas.

For the rest of the unit, students will create their own editoral or article. They can create the article as a feature story, take the wolf’s side, take the pigs side, tell it from the judge’s perspective, the juror’s perspective, etc. They must include a picture also that correlates with their story. Students will analyze their own article and also have someone peer edit their article. They will have time to revise their article again and then present their articles in front of the class.

By the end of this lesson, students should have a clearer understanding of rhetoric and how it functions within our lives. Rhetoric is much more than the written word, it lies within the colors we see in ads, the words we speak, the layout of pictures, the pictures shown, the size of the characters, etc. As we grow as a society and technology improves, rhetoric expands and so does our understanding of rhetoric. I hope that as the students complete this unit, they understand the importance of the written, spoken, and visual aspect of expository writing.

Context of Unit: The students have already been introduced to expository writing by giving a demonstration speech. I would like students to also explore another form of expository writing. This unit was designed to teach students to write an expository piece with audience, author, value, and medium in mind, while also focusing on the visual aspect of rhetoric.

Daily Lesson Plans: (classes are 42 minutes long)

Day 1: Rhetoric

Materials:  PowerPoint

Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: The girl said, “I want that.” Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to give the sentence more detail or substitute words for other words. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Instruct students to take out their notebooks for notes because today they will be learning about rhetoric. 3. Go through the powerpoint with the students. Explain to students each slide and allow students to ask questions. 4. After the powerpoint, you may discuss the following questions:  How do words influence what you believe? What you buy?  How do pictures influence what you buy? What you believe in? What you think about world events?  How can colors influence your opinion? 5. Have students put away their notes. Closure: What is rhetoric? What are the three positions? What is a medium? They need to give examples of each. Homework: None

Standards: NCTE standard 12: Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes. State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.  1A - identify and apply appropriate word analysis and vocabulary strategies to identify unfamiliar words.

Day 2: Analyzing Articles

Materials:  Articles  Worksheet

Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: Skipping, laughing, and swinging his arms, the boy jumped into the mud puddle. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that imitate that sentence. They may add more detail, but have to look like that. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Today you will learn how to recognize audience, author, value, and medium. You will also look at the format of editorals. In order to do this, you will need to take out your notes. 3. You will need to divide the class into groups of four. 4. Distribute the worksheet to each student. Go through the worksheet and explain to students they will be searching for the aspects listed in the worksheet. 5. Then, distribute the articles. 6. Allow students about 20 - 25 minutes to complete the worksheet before going through it. 7. Have one group read their article. Then proceed to ask the questions. They may have various answers. Ask them what made them think that and provide evidence for that way of thinking. 8. When discussion is finished, collect articles and have students keep their work. Remind them this can be used as a reference. Closure: Do articles have an intended audience? Is their language written towards that audience? What other conclusions can we draw from this about rhetoric and expository writing? Homework: None

Standards: NCTE Standard 3: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features. NCTE Standard 7: Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.  B - Identify author’s ideas and purposes.  C - Confirm, reject, and modify questions, predictions, and hypotheses based on evidence from the text.  C- Explain how illustrators yes art to express their ideas.  C - Recognize the influence media can have on the reader’s point of view concerning fiction materials. State Goal 2: Read and understand literature representative of various societies, eras, and ideas.  B - Relate what they have read to prior knowledge, experienced, and real world information.  B - Discuss the impact of author’s word choice on content. State Goal 4: Listen and speak effectively in a variey of situations.  A - Evaluate the situation and assume appropriate listening mode.  A - Focus attention on speaker as sender of the message. State Goal 5: Use the language arts to acquire, assess, and communicate information.  B - Analyze information from primary print and non-print sources. Day 3: What is the true story?

Materials:  The Three Little Pigs  The True Story of The 3 Little Pigs

Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: The girl, who loved her bouncing blonde curls, ran up and down the stairs. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that imitate that sentence. They may add more detail, but have to look like that. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Yesterday we looked at the rhetoric of articles. Today, we will be listening to two stories from two different perspectives and looking and looking at the visual and written rhetoric. 3. Tell students they will to take out their notebooks and write down any notes about the stories. The colors used, the pictures, the language, etc. Tell them they will be discussing these things. 4. Read them The Three Little Pigs. 5. After you get done, ask the students who is the author? Who is the intended audience? How do you know? What is the value the author writes about? What pictures does the illustrates use? Do they make you feel anything in particular about the charaters? Do you sympathize with any character? Do you notice anything about the colors used? About placement characters? Students will have various answers and you will have to flip back and forth. 6. Next, read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. After reading this book, ask the same questions as above. Then ask how the viewpoints change? Who do you sympathize with? 7. Students will need to compare their answers now in discussion. What did they notice about both books? Are there differences? Who do they sympathize with and why? Did they pictures influence them or the words? Closure: How do colors and pictures influence our feelings? How do words impact us along with the pictures? Homework: Tomorrow we will be creating our own article and you must write from a perspective regarding the wolf in the story. You can write from a judge’s perspective, a juror’s perspective, a pig’s perspective, the wolf’s perspective, etc. Be thinking of what perspective you would like to write from.

Standards: NCTE Standard 3: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features. State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.  B - Identify author’s ideas and purposes.  C - Ask and respond to open-ended questions. State Goal 2: Read and nderstand literature representative of various societies, eras, and ideas.  B - Discuss the impact of author’s word choice on content. State Goal 4: Listen and speak effectively in a variety of situations.  A - Evaluate the situation and assume appropriate listening mode.  A - Focus attention on speaker as sender of the message.

Day four and five: Let’s write!

Materials:  The Three Little Pigs  The True Story of The 3 Little Pigs  Examples of articles for students to look at  Self-reflection form

Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: The dog ran and jumped up onto the girl’s lap. Day five’s sentence: The girl yelled loudly. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that add more detail. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Have students grab their writer notebooks. 3. Students will write an article that would be featured in a newspaper following correct form about the events that happened in the three little pigs from one of the following perspectives: the judge, a juror, a witness, a pig, the wolf, a police officer, or the warden. Students also need to draw picture that correlates with the story. Remember, the picture can evoke emotion and reiterate your point. 4. The students may look at the articles we analyzed as a guide for form and they may also look at the books. Their articles and self-reflection forms should be done be the end of the second day. 5. When finished, students need to grab a self-reflection paper form and fill it out. Closure: Have students wrap up their writing and put away any materials. Homework: To work on their rough draft. It must be finished by the end of the class period on the fifth day.

Standards: NCTE Standard 5: Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to commnciate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. NCTE Standard 6: Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique and discuss print and non-print texts. State Goal 3: Write to communcate for a variety of purposes.  A - Demonstrate appropriate use of the eight parts of speech.  B - Analyze basic audience and purpose for writing and choose the appropriate form.  C - Choose informational writing that supports a topic or thesis statement with evidence

Day 6: Peer - Editing

Materials:  Peer - editing worksheet  Articles  The Three Little Pigs  The True Story of The 3 Little Pigs

Anticipatory set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: The boy’s ice cream cone fell on the ground. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that add more detail. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Have students take out their rough draft of their article and their peer - reflection worksheet. Distribute and explain the peer editing worksheet. 3. Pair students up and have students complete the peer editing worksheet. Remind them to analyze the piece of work and answering the questions in detail. 4. When finished, pair students up with another student and have them repeat the process if time allows. Closure: What did we notice when we completed peer-editing? What do we need to work on? Homework: None.

Standards: NCTE Standard 3: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions, with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features. NCTE Standard 4: Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.  B - Identify author’s ideas and purposes.  C - Confirm, reject and modify questions, predictions, and hypotheses based on evidence from the text.  C - Explain how illustrators use art to express their ideas. State Goal 2: Read and understand literature representative of various societies, eras, and ideas.  B - Discuss the impact of author’s word choice on content. State Goal 3: Write to communicate for a variety of purposes.  A - Proofread for correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.  B - Edit and revise content.

Day 7 and 8: Finalize your piece! Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: Screaming and kicking, the kid threw a fit in the middle of the store. Day seven’s sentence: The woman, who was having a really bad day, smiled at the salesclerk. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that imitate that sentence. They may add more detail, but have to look like that. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Students will complete a final draft working off of their rough drafts and their peer responses. Their final draft must be in proper form, proofread, and have a picture accompany the piece. 3. They will have two class periods to finish their piece. If they are not finished by the end of the second class period, they may work on it at home. It is due at the beginning of the ninth day. 4. Tell students they will be reading their finished products in front of the classroom. Closure: Remind students their product must be finished with a picture that accompanies the story by day 9. Homework: To continue working on their article and picture.

Standards: NCTE Standard 4: Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. NCTE Standard 5: Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately tocommunciate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. NCTE Standard 12: Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes. State Goal 3: Write to communicate for a variety of purposes.  A - Demonstrate appropriate use of the eight parts of speech.  B - Analyze basic audience and purpose for writing and choose the appropriate form.  C - Choose informational writing that supports a topic or thesis statement with evidence.

Day 9 and 10 - Presentations

Materials:  Grading rubric  Students will need their articles

Anticipatory Set: Instruct students they will be participating in Language Play. Put the following sentence on the board: She ate her ice cream, laughing and smiling. Day ten’s sentence: Her cheeks were as pink as cotton candy. Have students write down that sentence on their sheet of paper. Tell students you will give them three minutes to think of as many sentences that imitate that sentence. They may add more detail, but have to look like that. After three minutes, have students share for three minutes or so. Ask them how their changes improved or didn’t improve the sentence. Lesson: 1. Anticipatory set 2. Students will read their article and show their picture one by one in front of the classroom practicing good presentation skills. 3. If you have remaining time, discuss the differences between stories. How did the pictures help reiterate the point of the story. Did students remember the pictures or the stories? Why? Closure: Discuss the impact of pictures along with stories or visual with spoken/written rhetoric. Homework: None

Standards: NCTE Standard 3: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions, with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features. NCTE Standard 4: Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. NCTE Standard 12: Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes. State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.  B - Identify author’s ideas and purposes.  C - Confirm, reject and modify questions, predictions, and hypotheses based on evidence from the text.  C - Explain how illustrators use art to express their ideas. State Goal 2: Read and understand literature representative of various societies, eras, and ideas.  B - Discuss the impact of author’s word choice on content. State Goal 4: Listen and speak effectively in a variety of situations.  A - Evaluate the situation and assume appropriate listening mode.  A - Differentiate between formal and informal purposes for listening.  B - Use language that is clear, audible, and appropriate.  B - Contribute meaningfully to group discussions by following accepted guidelines of verbal interaction.

Bibliography:

Hill, Charles A. Marguerite Helmers ed. Defining Visual Rhetoric. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Mahway, New Jersey 2004.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

Scieszka, Jon. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. New York: Scholastic Inc, 1998.

Smith, Jerry. “Journal Star Online.” 30 Apr. 2007. 30 Apr. 2007. http://www.pjstar.com

“The New York Times.” 30 Apr. 2007. 30 Apr. 2007.