0.1 Lesson 1: routines of reading, writing, thinking, and talking  (Page 4/5)

Transition into introducing students to this unit by telling them that for the next few weeks they will be reading, listening to, writing, and delivering speeches designed to inspire change.

Preview the unit: architecture

Give each student a copy of the Unit Architecture handout . The architecture graphic should also be posted in the room.

Reading an Architecture: Take about ten minutes to give the students a brief overview of the unit using the architecture graphic. You may choose to use the following explanations noted in italics:

The architecture graphic shows the design and the intellectual work of the unit. It includes the big ideas and overarching questions of the unit along with specific questions about the speeches to guide your reading, writing and discussions.

In the top box going across, the nominal theme of the unit is Speaking Out. This nominal theme will be the focus of our work with all the unit's speeches including the one that you will develop for the unit's culminating project. We will study persuasive speaking using significant historical examples of speeches that inspired change.

Note the questions in the same top box. These are the overarching questions that will frame our inquiry about historical figures Speaking Out and about persuasive speaking. (Consider asking a student to read the questions aloud.) What did the these speakers do to inspire change through words?What are the characteristics of an effective persuasive speech?

The rest of the architecture can be read in two ways: Vertically, from top to bottom, or horizontally, from left to right.

First, look at the architecture vertically, from top to bottom. Start at the left with the icon that looks like pages of a book. This tells you that the first speech we will study has the title, "Ain't I a Woman?",and was delivered by Sojourner Truth.

Now, look horizontally, left to right: The titles and authors in the other icons going across list the speeches we will read, write and talk about later in the unit. Notice that the last icon says that there will be student speeches to let you know that you will be developing at least one speech as part of participating in this unit.

Below the text icons in the next long box, you see the same sorting/comprehension questions for all the speeches. We'll use these when we read a speech the first time to get its gist.

The box below the significance questions has the questions for each text that we will use to interpret, write and talk about each speech. The next box down, Analysis of Texts, has the questions you will be asked to figure out the methods speakers use that are persuasive for their audience.

The two boxes below give brief information about the speeches you will develop and deliver.