Blogging Pedagogy

Liz's lesson plan covers 3 class periods, and takes students through the process of revision as a group. The lesson serves two purposes: First, it takes the students through a practice rhetorical analysis, allowing common mistakes to come to light and be discussed before the Unit II essay. And second, it demonstrates honing a paper through revision. In the end, the students produce a coherent sample paper as a group. Read on for Liz's comments on her experiences using this assignment.

Layne's lesson plan focuses on helping students understand rhetorical appeals through use of political ads and charts. Assignment focused on the 2008 Elections, but could be easily adapted to current mayoral elections or any other political ad.

Q. How did your students respond to the assignment?

In the spirit of last week's theme, this week's Lesson Plan Interview is Michael Widner discussing rhetorical analysis and Mr. Rogers. Michael's Lesson Plan can be accessed here.

Q. How did your students respond to the assignment? How effective was it for teaching rhetorical analysis?

It seems that, once again, rhetoric has asserted itself in the Democratic primary.

Of course, it hasn't happened yet, but now news outlets are focusing on Obama's speech tomorrow night as a "make or break moment" for him. It might be a good way to start a conversation in class about rhetorical situations - what Obama's goals are in this speech, what is the context, etc., and then follow it up the next class with an analysis of how well he responds to the rhetorical situation.

The Daily Show has always satirized media coverage. Still, recently -- and especially in reference to election and campaign coverage -- I've noticed in an increase in the number of times the word "narrative" has appeared on the program. More and more, the show seems to be focusing on journalistic rhetoric and its misuse.

Here's a fairly typical clip that focuses on language and tone.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=148479&title=daily-show-down

Has anyone tried using these sorts of clips to illustrate a point in a rhetoric class?

I only caught about a half hour or so, but the Bill Moyers special "Buying the War" seems like it would be of great use in a rhetoric class. It's essentially an analysis of media coverage during the run up to the war in Iraq. What this means is that focus throughout (or at least what I saw) is on evidence, argumentation, credibility, tone and the like. While much of it is a critique of current journalistic practices, there's a whole lot going on that could be brought into the classroom.

Over the course of this semester, a few students have sent me YouTube links - or mentioned them to me - that they feel are relevant to the class topic (in this case, globalization) and class discussions. It certainly seems like a teaching moment. So far, I've been responding individually, but wonder if anyone out there has had similar experiences and if they've been able to take these clips that the students are finding and use them instructively in the classroom.

If you are looking for something to do with your class in these last few weeks, you might be interested in checking out this article from Pravda, which argues that Don Imus got sacked because he was going to out the government’s 9-11 conspiracy. This is a fantastic way of presenting terministic screens for students.