Introduction to selected lessons in persuasion  (Page 3/6)

• quick-writes composed by individual learners in response to questions and tasks for any and all of the Design Features;
• pair/trio sharing of individual quick-writes to establish academic conversations in a safe environment with high accountability to the task and the group members;
• charting of the pair/trio sharing by members of the group to represent the work of the group to the entire class;
• gallery walks for members of the group (or class) to read and take notes on the pair/trio work in preparation for a whole class discussion of the task;
• whole class discussions of the questions or tasks that prompted the scaffold of quick-writes, pair/trio share, charting, and gallery walks to deepen understandings and address lingering questions;
• model of a total performance in order to help learners develop a mental picture of what the real thing looks like and to understand its essence;
• reader/writer notebooks in which learners compose quick-writes, take notes, compose observations for writings, respond to questions and tasks, and track their learning; and
• step backs in which learners meta-cognitively reflect through quick-writes, pair/trio shares, charting, gallery walks, discussions, and writing assignments on the content and pedagogy of their learning to develop and track their understandings and habits of thinking.

Instructional rationale for the unit

Patterned way of reading, writing, and talking

This unit supports students’ developing understanding of persuasion through content-focused inquiries supported by habits of thinking. We use the expression "habits of thinking" as an umbrella term for knowing how to work in different disciplines. The unit describes how students will develop habits of thinking as they practice reading the speeches in the unit multiple times for different purposes, as proficient readers do when making sense of complex texts. They will also write and talk about the texts in terms of the different questions posed as they are guided to interpret the speeches for the quality of their arguments and evidence and to analyze each speech's structure. What students learn about persuasion and persuasive speeches, as part of this patterned work with each speech, helps them to do the work of ELA to use the unit's core speeches as models for the development of their own persuasive speeches.

Embedded in this patterned way of reading, writing, and talking with each speech are the rituals and routines which scaffold students through the tasks by requesting initial thinking in the form of quick-writes where the goal is to get one’s thoughts down without regard to language conventions. Such writing helps students see that they can discover what’s on their minds by thinking quickly on paper. Discussions with pairs or trios create accountability to the task at hand and to the group through intellectual intimacy and allows students to share their thinking in a semi-private situation before taking it public with a large group discussion where it can be debated and tracked through teacher charting of responses. Students learn new information in manageable segments which are sequenced to build on prior knowledge and explicitly relate to the overarching questions and core concepts of the unit.