Merry Christmas,
Shona
Annotation Lesson - Old Major’s Speech
Animal Farm
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Lesson Objectives:
Students will be able to identify and analyze the three main rhetorical appeals, pathos, ethos, logos in a fiction text.
Students will be able to analyze and academically discuss the author’s use of rhetorical appeals using sentence stems.
Students will be able to identify and analyze the use of rhetorical appeals in a secondary text.
Students will be able to critically analyze a text and use text evidence to support their thinking.
Day One:
Students are introduced to rhetorical appeals and take notes on their definition and meaning. I introduce this material with a short video and class discussion.
Students then practice identifying the rhetorical appeals in a speech made by President Obama. Students practice explaining his use of the rhetorical appeals with a partner.
After students are comfortable with the basics of rhetorical appeals. I then provide them with a copy of Old Major’s speech from Animal Farm. Students will do a basic annotation for fiction and answer the questions I have provided for them. We have been doing these types of annotations all year so they are pretty comfortable with them. They are not annotating for pathos, ethos or logos. I simply want them to have a deep understanding of the text and the purpose it plays in the overall novel.
Day Two:
To begin today we review rhetorical appeals using an anchor chart and the contents of Old Major’s speech. I then walk students through my own annotation of the text using a previously recorded video. This allows students to stop and take notes, as well as replay what I have said. As I annotate, I try to pull students away from just identifying the rhetorical appeals and into a deeper level of analysis. This is always extremely difficult for my students and takes several examples before they really understand the process.
After students have finished watching the annotation video they then begin to discuss the speech in small groups using sentence stems. These thinking stems are from Lead4ward and I just filled in the blanks so that they would apply to Old Major’s speech. You could do this with any text. This allows the discussion to move from a superficial level of summary and identification to analysis.
As students are discussing the speech, I walk around to hear their conversations and quickly correct misunderstandings. I am not only focused on rhetorical appeals but also on their general understanding of the text.
To assess their understanding I ask them to identify the most powerful rhetorical appeal and its effect on the audience in the text using the “write around strategy”.
Day Three:
After students have spent two days identifying rhetorical appeals and analyzing Old Major’s speech I move them onto a harder speech. Due to the timing of our lesson I used President Trump’s Inauguration speech as a secondary text for students to practice their analysis on. They went through the annotation process again and then completed a two part short answer question.
Short answer questions for student response:
1. On which rhetorical (pathos, ethos, logos) does President Trump rely the most? Why do you think this was his choice? PROVIDE TEXT EVIDENCE to support your thinking.
2. In what ways are President Trump's speech similar to Old Major's? In what ways are they different? Use TEXT EVIDENCE FROM BOTH.
2. In what ways are President Trump's speech similar to Old Major's? In what ways are they different? Use TEXT EVIDENCE FROM BOTH.
This short answer allows me to see if students understand the basics of rhetorical appeals and can provide a deeper level of analysis. I also grade their annotations to see if their thinking has been made visible during their reading.
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