Blog Post #4: Assignment Template

I love the content and layout of this article!  The template included provides a simple and clearly explained process to help students read, comprehend, and respond to texts.  In addition, I think it is extremely useful that the template incorporates many of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts into a single template, which can be utilized by students and teachers.

Reading this article helped me develop a coherent strategy for creating my three-week unit plan draft. I had planned on introducing and developing students’ argumentative writing skills, because that is what the students in my placement classroom are currently learning. However, before reading this article, I wasn’t confident on how I was going to incorporate a literature component into my unit. This template helped me work through a lot of the issues I was facing because it lays out the process step-by-step and provides multiple ways for me to structure lessons to achieve student success and CCSS.

As mentioned above, my placement classroom is currently working on argumentative writing and this past week students learned the three Aristotelian rhetorical appeals (Logos, Ethos, Pathos) mentioned in the article. To assess student learning, my mentor teacher broke the students into groups and asked them to develop a skit that displayed one or more of the rhetorical appeals. Students were assessed on whether or not their fellow classmates could discern the rhetorical appeal(s) their classmates were attempting to act out. Understanding rhetoric is an important topic and I think this project successfully encouraged and motivated student learning.

One thing I particularly enjoyed while reading this article was its approach to rhetorically revising and editing. I’m currently taking English 408 and I’m realizing the importance of revision. For some reason I don’t remember the revision process being a huge focus in my high school education. Therefore, revision of multiple drafts hasn’t been something I have incorporated in my own writing process. I used to spend hours and hours writing papers because I expected my first draft to be perfect. This is a very ineffective and frustrating process that I want to make sure my students avoid! In my future classroom I want to provide students with the resources and tools that not only teach them how to be great writers, but also how to enjoy writing as well.