Category Archives: Logic and Communication

Apr 28 2013
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Assessments, Instructional Delivery: Plan and Progress, Logic and Communication, Teaching

Back to the EOC Swing of Things

Well, it has been a hard month. I returned to work at the start of April, but keeping up with all of the changes and the blog fell to the wayside. As this is the EOC Swing, I wanted to get back to helping out others and posting as much as possible.
We get out for summer on May 22, and I will diligently work on uploading everything I have missed over the gap and adapting to the change in family arrangements and the loss of my brother.
For right now, I’m going to post a few files to help cover the gap.

What’s the best review pattern?
Well, I don’t have an answer to the best. I choose to use a very structured class schedule:
1. First, our bell ringer still follows the Caught Ya method, but I modify the sentences to meet specific needs of the students. Goal, 7-10 minutes. (Because this is changed based on the previous day’s instruction, there is no specific file to upload for you.)
2. Confused Vocab: This file includes five days of warm-up/bell ringer activities for use in English classrooms (10 minutes a day for five days). The plan comes with an outline, student handouts, a notes grid, and answer keys. You can find this file at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bell-Ringer-Warm-Up-EOCEOG-Prep-for-Commonly-Confused-Words
3. Foreign Words and Phrases: I have created a variety of supplies for this, but I am not yet ready to post them. I have videos for each of the terms with short review tasks to use at the start of the year, and then I have a set with five words a day in the fill-in-the-blank sets where students must use the correct word and justify their answers by identifying context clues which helped to identify the correct term. I will get this posted as soon as possible.
4. Skills Lesson and Strand Reviews – I basically review a specific term going SPI by SPI for key terms and vocab. I have posted the first one, Communication. Use this basic PPT and student handout to reteach Tennessee State English I Communication Standards with your students. This is a great way to put all of the information in the same spot right before the test date! Activity Description: T reviews the strand with definitions and examples on the PPT. Students track information on the included graphic organizers.
FREE Activity Posted: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/EOC-Swing-Communication-Review
5. EOC Item Sampler Think Aloud – I break the test into sections and review every question. These tests are available at http://www.tn.gov/education/assessment/sec_samplers.shtml.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions.EOC Swing Communication

Feb 26 2013
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Instructional Delivery: Plan and Progress, Logic and Communication, Teaching

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Well, we did it. I’m not sure if it will stick, but I just saw the best results ever with teaching Inductive and Deductive Reasoning. How? Aren’t you just dying to know!
First, I started out with presenting the students with two arguments from the same conversation. I asked students to tell me the difference between the two, and they easily recognized one as “from personal experience” and the other as “a scientific principle”. Nice start.
Next, I presented a situation in which someone was robbed and the police detective came in to gather evidence. This was presented in a paragraph narrative, and then we broke down the argument in terms of the conclusion and the evidence leading to the conclusion. One amazing student connected to the previous lesson and pointed out the text structure as chronological.
From here, I stopped the discussion and transitioned into student notes on inductive and deductive reasoning. We recapped each reasoning with a fill-in-the-blank paragraph summary of the logic before looking at examples.
Here comes the newbie of the instruction. At a training over the summer, a wonderful lady (I’m so bad with names) who works for the state said, “Lots of teachers say they struggle with inductive and deductive and can’t teach it. But I think they miss the key step pf having students create the arguments first.” So that’s what we did. Students created the arguments and we then evaluated an argument. They knew what type it was, but they had to justify why it was that type and identify the conclusions and premises. After doing this with both inductive and deductive, I modeled looking at an argument, identifying the conclusion and the premises, and then determining whether it was inductive or deductive.

inductive 1

Files/Resources:
1. Teaching Bundle with PPT and Exit Ticket with EOC-Swag can be found at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Inductive-and-Deductive-Reasoning-in-English-Language-Arts-Adaptable-with-Key
2. Room Display Word Wall is available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Logical-Fallacy-Terms-and-Categories-Word-Wall-Poster-Printables
3. Trading Card Logic Strand Review Game is located at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Essential-Vocabulary-Trading-Cards-Activity-Bundle-Logic-Edition

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Feb 10 2013
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Instructional Delivery: Plan and Progress, Logic and Communication, Motivating Students, Teaching

Unit: Liking the Logic

Every single person in the whole world likes to get what he or she wants. I’m using that as the bait for the logic unit.

We have started out this unit by a review of persuasive techniques. Students took notes and we viewed commercials (intentionally planned to happen after Super Bowl Sunday) to see the examples in the format. We also looked at sample magazine ads for students to have that experience. One fun thing to do was to have the class split in two groups and create to “Carousel” rotations around a circle of advertisements. I had a worksheet for students to use to track their thoughts on the devices used in the advertisements. Now, the class was grouped in two, but I went through rotation 1 as more of a teaching technique. We returned to whole class instruction and discussed what we learned or realized in the first phase of the task. The second step was intended to be to rotate through the second group as a quiz, but we ended up doing more practice instead.

Students were then given all terms from persuasive devices/propaganda and logical fallacy and asked to sort the words in some way. It was interesting because I did not give the extra category title because I wanted to see what they would come up with, and that was a struggle. With lose guidelines some students did alphabetical order, some did “I know” and “I don’t” piles. Only one group did the grouping of persuasive devices (learned) and logical fallacies (not yet taught at the time of the sort) that I was hoping to see. This served as a good introduction and transition into the logical fallacies, so I am glad we did it.

With a quick review of the persuasive devices, we transitioned into the logical fallacy notes with the same format where students take notes, we view and discuss a commercial, and we view and discuss an advertisement.

After looking at persuasive devices and logical fallacy, we went over the rhetorical situation in terms of the basics and the appeals. We talked about speaker, subject, and audience in detail and moved into ethos, logos, and pathos. For here, I wanted to stop to create a logical assessment for mastery of the persuasive devices and logical fallacies in text formatting as the material should be taught in the manner it is tested. Students were able to demonstrate mastery of the visual examples, so we needed to transition into the elements of text. By reviewing the rhetorical triangle first, students would be able to identify the appeal and help narrow down the choices of the rhetorical appeals in order to identify the most prevalent device in the test. So, we did a word sort and arranged the persuasive devices and logical fallacies into ethos, logos, and/or pathos.

We looked at text examples of all devices – persuasive and logical fallacies – and identified which were present and which were most prevalent. We also looked at the effect of the

Then, I gave the test. I preach that 85% is the “Proficiency Percent” we aim for as individuals and as a class. How was the success rate in the standards-based assessment after all of this effort? I’d address that but I better cut short so I can go make the cupcakes.

Files/Resources:
1. I have loaded the full lesson plan with all ppts, handouts, and assessments to Kirk’s Corner. Find it at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Persuasive-Devices-and-Logical-Fallacy-Lessons-and-Materials-Customize
1a. If you have plans and only need an assessment for this section, you can find the test itself at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Persuasive-Devices-and-Logical-Fallacy-Quiz-and-Answer-Key-doc
2. The walls for the room were changed to include terms from Logic and Connumication standards. Find the printable posters at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Logical-Fallacy-Terms-and-Categories-Word-Wall-Poster-Printables
3. Students created trading cards for homework using the same formatting as with the Literature Review strand activity. Those materials are available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Essential-Vocabulary-Trading-Cards-Activity-Bundle-Logic-Edition

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