Introduction to selected lessons in persuasion

Introduction

The following arc of lessons comes from a high school unit, Persuasion: Speaking Out. It was developed for the English language arts teachers and students of a California school district by the English Studies team, Institute for Learning, Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh. On a tour of selected lessons, you will be able to read full descriptions of the sequence of instruction with explanations of practices and routines, support for English language learners, and helpful tips for implementation.

The lesson tour provides readers with the full scope of student work for the unit within the explanations of the first four lessons of this fifteen-lesson unit. In lesson one, learners are introduced to the overall sequence of work and the unit’s culminating project, which asks students to develop their own persuasive speeches. The actual delivery of the speeches is part of later lessons. The four lessons on this tour describe how to assist students to bridge from their initial understanding of persuasion and instigating change to comprehend, interpret and analyze the first model speech text. This beginning work puts learners on the path to developing new understanding about effective speeches in order to develop and deliver well-argued, persuasive speeches of their own.

The total unit is built around three persuasive speeches. A large portion of the work is devoted to reading, rereading, discussing, and writing about these speeches to develop a response to the unit’s overarching questions about persuasion and inspiring change. Text-specific guiding questions help students comprehend, interpret, and analyze each text. Throughout the unit students practice writing and speaking like the speeches they read, using a Reader's/Writer's Notebook to capture their work.

Four on-line lessons

The four online lessons come from the beginning of the unit and form an arc of instruction around the first text: “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth, May 1851. Women’s Convention. Akron, Ohio.

Students learn about persuasive speeches using Unit Text 1 (Truth) to:

• Bridge: Access prior knowledge about instigating change
• Read to get the gist and identify the issue and speaker
• Reread to select significant sentences/phrases that appear to be most significant to the speaker’s argument
• Reflect on a) the speaker’s argument, b) identifying and explaining significant passages in a text
• StepBack: Think about thinking/learning processes and connection to instructional tasks, text, talk that supported them
• SpeakLike: Interpret, deliver, analyze, and discuss the speech
• Reread again, WriteAbout, and engage in an inquiry-based discussion on the speech’s guiding question
• Reflect on interpretations of the speaker’s meaning
• StepBack: Think about thinking/learning...
• Reread again differently to identify the methods the speaker used to build, support, and structure her argument
• Generate characteristics of effective persuasive speeches