This lesson is for : Grade 9:
Summary
Throughout the school year, English 9 Honors students study works of literature that share a central theme of social injustice, ranging from novels such as Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, to speeches including Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream. This project continues with this theme, as students begin examining the different persuasive appeals and rhetorical devices used in a variety of powerful speeches given by others throughout history. As students independently and collaboratively deconstruct their selected speeches, they gain an appreciation of the elements present in an effective persuasive speech; and, they gain practice in delivering their own speech to an audience of their peers. This project was designed in response to the struggles students experienced with creating and giving oral presentations earlier in the school year, but will prepare any students for future school assignments and life experiences in which they will be required to speak in front of an audience.
TIPC Ratings
Research & Information Fluency
Rating: Ideal – Explanation:
- Through demonstrating annotation methods, the teacher models strategies to guide student investigation into their self-selected speeches.
- Through interviewing students as they annotate their speeches and create their slideshow content, the teacher facilitates and formatively assesses authentic tasks where students are engaged in using information fluently.
- As students create their slides for their presentation, they assemble and synthesize the information in their speech, making choices about how they will display and convey their information to their audience.
Communication & Collaboration
Rating: Ideal – Explanation:
- Through conferencing with the students while they work to annotate their speeches and create their slideshow content, the teacher facilitates and formatively assesses authentic tasks where students are engaged in meaningful communication and purposeful collaboration.
- Students select appropriate digital tools that allow them to communicate and collaborate with their peers both during and outside of class time. Google slides is selected by many groups, allowing students to work collaboratively on and peer edit their presentation content.
- Students hone their public speaking skills through recording, reflecting, and re-recording themselves giving the presentation.
- Students submit projects and provide constructive feedback to other groups through the county’s Student 21 website. The Student 21 blog was purposefully selected in lieu of creating and using a teacher-made blog because the Student 21 site has a much farther reach and will allow anyone to learn from the students’ presentations and corresponding comments.
- English 10 students from the same high school and AP/Dual Enrollment English students from another Henrico County high school complete a rhetorical analysis of the same speeches and provide thorough feedback to the students through the Student 21 blog posts.
- Also through the county’s Student 21 site, students reflect on their roles as communicators and collaborators. This reflection occurs when students initially post their project, when the students read the comments left by others, and write a reflective post in response to the comments they receive.
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Rating: Ideal – Explanation:
- While conferencing with the students as they work to annotate their speeches and create their slideshow content, the teacher facilitates and formatively assesses the students’ understanding of their selected speech by asking guiding questions.
- Because changes cannot be made to the slideshow after it has been imported to Knovio or Present.Me, students must carefully plan the sequence of their slides before importing to Knovio or Present.Me.
- Also, because these virtual presentation tools do not allow the presenter to interact with the slides by pointing to or highlighting key elements, students must carefully think through and select the most appropriate design elements that will allow them to clearly explain the content on their slides. Students must consider that even features like font and color choice can impact tone and meaning.
- Students must work through technical obstacles when recording. For instance, with Knovio, students cannot skip slides or jump back to previous slides in the presentation. Again, the sequence of the slides must be carefully planned and aligned with the script.
- For students working in groups, the students must also decide how to insert themselves in front of the camera without creating awkward transitions. For instance, the screen turns black for a couple seconds each time the recording is stopped. These interruptions in recording must be carefully planned so that they are purposeful and not distracting to the audience.
- Through carefully annotating and analyzing the speeches, to providing thoughtful feedback to other groups’ presentations on the same speech, students use higher level thinking when analyzing the speeches that they select.
- When viewing a presentation created by a different group that analyzed the same speech, students carefully listen and evaluate their peers’ interpretation and understanding of the speech.
- As they write and post responses to their Student 21 blog posts, students reflect on their roles as critical thinkers and set goals for future growth.
Creativity & Innovation
Rating: Ideal – Explanation:
- By providing this scaffolded approach to analyzing speeches and delivering oral presentations, the teacher develops, facilitates and assesses a learning environment where students are engaged in creativity and innovation.
- As students annotate their speeches and plan their presentation content, they synthesize existing and self-generated knowledge to create new ideas and products that allow for self-reflection during and after the creation process; and, through their virtual presentations, provide other students with alternative perspectives on a speech that they each read and carefully studied.
- Students reflect on the creative and innovative process of creating their virtual presentations. After re-watching their finished presentations and reading the constructive feedback left by others on the Student 21 blog posts, students set goals for future growth.
Lesson Materials
