logic | Kirk's Corner

Logic Continued: The Rhetorical Situation

This week is for teaching the rhetorical situation including the rhetorical triangle and the rhetorical devices of parallelism, repetition, hyperbole, simile, analogy, and metaphor. We close the week with the next installment of Common Core Writing Assessments and immediately close out Writing and Communication the following week with Inductive and Deductive Logic and the unit exam.

First, students are going to take notes over the rhetorical triangle, create a foldable, and then sort text examples into categories of ethos, logos, and pathos. We did this using Obama’s address announcing the death of Osama bin Laden. This sounds incredibly depressing in reflection, but it worked well for our purposes. I will say that, to accommodate my need for test mode, we opened the article with previewing and annotating the text. Students then moved into looking at ethos, logos, and pathos within the text. For homework, students will review the test and create an overall summary of the message and the impact of the specific appeals on the message. Overall, I would say this was an effective lesson and served as a solid introduction since we are looking at the more specific rhetorical devices tomorrow.

Next, we looked specifically at rhetorical devices. For this steps I had the students take notes on the devices and provided an example of each device. To raise the level a bit, I required students to really think about the example and have them identify the part and explain its impact on message of the example. This was a challenge for them, but I think it helped. We ran out of time for the task (lovely drills and unexpected things a teacher has to do), but the next day I revised the PPT to include several examples and video clips of each device. We talked about the examples and discussed the video clips. Then, students were better prepared to explain the impact of the device on the message itself.

All in all, I would say the students are prepared for this strand… I think… Next week we will review text structures and inductive/deductive reasoning before taking our unit exam. Then I will be able to tell you for sure.

Files/Resources
1. Introduction to Rhetoric – The entire bundle including the worksheets and PPT files is located at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Persuasive-Devices-and-Logical-Fallacy-Lessons-and-Materials-Customize
2. Rhetorical Devices – I will get this loaded asap but I have tons to do to prepare for next week… including making revisions to the test.

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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Tag Archives: logic

Logic Continued: The Rhetorical Situation

Unit: Liking the Logic