Overview
As a new student teacher tasked with teaching a unit about how authors of informational texts use rhetoric to advance their messages, I knew I would have to gain an understanding of my students’ starting knowledge of rhetorical terms and abilities to analyze texts rhetorically. While I had some existing assessment data to work with, the assignments either targeted students’ literary analysis skills or provided evidence of understanding of rhetoric from early in the year. It offered me no conception of how well my students retained their knowledge of rhetorical strategies from the first semester or applied that information to understand informational texts.
The Rhetoric Challenge assessment allowed me to pretest students’ mastery of rhetorical strategies and persuasive analysis. Each day, students spent half the class period watching a portion of Twelve Angry Men. Then, they worked in groups to analyze, in any format they choose, how the characters used rhetoric to persuade others to agree with their opinions. Because I used this assessment to pretest students’ abilities, I graded the assessment for completion. The students in each class who most thoroughly analyzed the characters’ rhetoric won an exemption from the rhetorical analysis portion of their Independent Reading Project.
The assessment instructions section of this post demonstrates how I use clear, active statements and prompting questions to direct students’ work. In the assessment data section, I describe how students’ products provided me information about their levels of mastery, which I used to produce unit lesson plans to bridge what they could do with the skills necessary for completing the summative assessment successfully. In the feedback section, I include examples of the emails I sent to winning groups, which demonstrates how I highlight students’ strengths in my interactions with them.
Assessment Instructions
Objective
Reading- 9.5.6.6 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.
Speaking and Viewing- 9.9.3.3 Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, intended audience, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
Language- 9.11.6.6 Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level.
Content Objective: I can identify rhetorical devices in a piece of informational writing and argue if the rhetorical devices I identified do or do not serve the author’s purpose for writing.
Language Objective: I can use declarative sentences to argue if a rhetorical device supports a text’s purpose, with content-specific rhetorical terms (allusion, simile, narrative, etc.) and the general-academic terms: occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone.
Function: Argue
Forms: Declarative Sentences
Vocabulary: content-specific rhetorical terms (allusion, simile, narrative, etc.) and the general-academic terms: occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone.
Discussion of Assessment Data
Students produced a variety of products to demonstrate how they understood rhetoric functioning within the film. Prize-winning products included:
- A presentation that featured forty-seven correctly identified and thoroughly-analyzed uses of rhetoric.
- A fifty-minute podcast through which a group of five students correctly identified and thoroughly-analyzed fifty-three uses of rhetoric.
- A mock news report through which three students correctly identified and thoroughly-analyzed fifty uses of rhetoric.
From the assessment data, I understood that I would need to build activities into the unit to help students review a few terms they often misidentified (assessed through the Social Worker’s Performance Task) and differentiate between analyzing how rhetoric functions and summarizing how rhetoric appears (assessed through the Governor’s Budget Fiasco).
Feedback (Communication to Winners)
Below, I have included the text of emails I sent to students to notify them that they won the challenge.
Communication 1
Communication 2
Communication 3
Communication 1
March 18, 2020
Congratulations, you won the fourth-hour rhetoric challenge!
Your podcast analysis impressed me in so many ways. It was fun to hear you consider not just the jurors’ rhetorical choices but to listen to your interpretation of how the filmmakers’ choices impacted the film’s mood and tone. I especially enjoyed the part at the end where you all argued what rhetorical choice you thought was most significant to the film; that’s college-level thinking and analysis.
Because you already provided such a thorough rhetorical analysis, you do not need to complete the second pair of the IRP. Just submit something identifying yourselves as winners instead of the project. For the essay, you do not need to complete a paragraph comparing the second pair, just identify yourselves as winners.
Let me know if you have any questions about your prize. Enjoy the extra free time.
Ms. Mattei
Communication 2
March 18, 2020
I hope you are staying well during your extended spring break. I am happy to notify you that your group won the first-hour rhetoric challenge.
Because your group analyzed rhetoric during the challenge, you need to complete only half of the second IRP pair. Winning means that you can choose to complete the Ptone OR The Elements of Argument portion, as opposed to submitting both. Additionally, you do not need to complete a paragraph comparing the second pair in the reflective essay.
For both IRP components, you need to identify yourselves as the challenge winners. For the analysis, write that you won rather than completing and submitting the second half. For the essay, identify yourselves as winners instead of writing the second paragraph.
Please reach out to me if you have any questions. Enjoy the payoff for your hard work; take some time to relax.
Have a good afternoon,
Ms. Mattei (who misses you all very much).
Communication 3
18 March, 2020
Congratulations, you won the fifth-hour rhetoric challenge!
Because you already provided such a thorough rhetorical analysis, you do not need to complete the second pair of the IRP. Just submit something identifying yourselves as winners instead of the project. For the essay, you do not need to complete a paragraph comparing the second pair, just identify yourselves as winners.
Let me know if you have any questions about your prize. Enjoy the extra free time.
Ms. Mattei
