Tag Archives: persuasion

11/2/2016

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70% of high school graduates don’t have adequate writing skills. How does that happen? One way it happens is that students don’t do the foundational activities that teachers provide and then end up trying to write an essay with any support or having learned anything. At least that’s what I’m seeing in my classes.

We discussed the rubric in class today, I made sure that everyone understood what the refutation paragraph is, and then I clarified the difference between an expository essay and a persuasive essay. I’m seeing a LOT of expository thesis statements out there. If you have a question about it, e-mail me or have me look over your essay!

Then, I gave time for people to revise their essays by adding in the persuasive techniques that we did yesterday, but I’ll be honest with you: most people don’t even have a rough draft. I would have thought that students would use the time today to get things taken care of, but instead, I saw most people today just play around.

Y’all. I seriously spend a lot of time developing activities that are based off of the rubric. I spend a lot of time writing the same assignments that you do. For what? Why am I stressing out over this? I have a high school diploma!

 

11/1/2016

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I know I’ve gotten behind with updating my blog: between sick babies, being sick myself, and the end of the grading period, I’ve been struggling to keep my head above water. As of noon today, my family has officially been fever free for 24 hours! Huzzah!

Remember – everything we do is connected. Think of my daily assignments like steps –

steps

If you don’t do the daily activities leading UP to the Final Copy, it’s going to be really hard to do a good job on it. I’m a little worried because there are A LOT of zeros in the gradebook for these foundational assignments. I absolutely can see a difference between the students who do the daily activities and the students who decide to be “trailblazers” and do things their own way.

I am a firm believer that you can’t become a better writer by doing worksheets or defining vocabulary words. The only way you can become a better writer is if you write! Crazy idea, I know! The other thing that can help your writing is if you read examples of good writing. Because of that, we looked at a few examples of powerful persuasion from Miracle on Ice, Remember the Titans, Judgment at Nuremberg, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Then, using our thesis statements, we practiced by using five different techniques.

30% of the rubric is over your persuasive techniques, so if you revise your essay with what we did in class today, you are making sure you have covered this aspect in your essay. See! If you do the daily work, it makes sure you address the rubric ahead of time! Work smarter, not harder!

1/26/2015 – B

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Today was a pretty interesting day that showed a great amount of maturity in my students. I honestly was really impressed with the comments that people made.

First, we printed the lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get in On”, listened to the song, and highlighted persuasive language in BLUE and highlighted references to TIME in yellow. Answer the three questions and drop off your highlighted lyrics (if you were absent so I can give you credit for highlighting along with the three questions).

Let's Get It On

We talked about the speaker and his audience (a girl) and analyzed that relationship. We highlighted evidence of carpe diem (time) in the poem, highlighted IRONY in the song, and highlighted references to LOVE in the song. We also specifically talked about how the song was contradictory and how it related to TIME (“stop beating ’round the bush”, and “this minute”).

We were really puzzled about the lyrics, especially the phrase “threatin’ you, baby”, so I did a little research. First, I wanted to make sure that I got the lyrics right, and it seems I did. So then, I went to Wikipedia and read this little tidbit. It seems Mr. Gaye had a troubled childhood and used his music to work through some of his issues. The power of poetry!

We talked about consent, and how the audience in the song has obviously NOT given consent.

Students then sat there puzzled as to why we listened to that song, so we read “To His Coy Mistress” to explain. It’s the original “Let’s Get It On”, just much creepier.

You can download my notes in a Word document so you don’t have to copy notes. Just save it wherever you save my stuff.

Coy Mistress Coy Mistress2I showed you eagles twirling and how that fit into the poem.

Lastly, we did the Syllogism Pyramid foldable. You can find the template in LMS.

For each triangle, create a text box and write the following:

  • If… (1st stanza – lines 1-20) + image
  • But… (2nd stanza – lines 21-32) + image
  • So… (3rd stanza – lines 33-46) + image

You will need to ROTATE the text box. Grab the little green ball and turn it. Make sure that the text box faces the hypotenuse. Don’t worry about the text that is already on the pyramid – that will be hidden when you fold it up.

4/10/14

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Hooray! Today we are working on our poems with our partner.

There will need to be two poems, so if you opted to work by yourself, you will need to write TWO poems.

poems

Poem 1

  • Persuasive
  • 24 lines
  • 6 stanzas
  • Rhyming couplets
  • AABB Rhyme Scheme

Poem 2

  • Rejection of Poem 1
  • 24 lines
  • 6 stanzas
  • Rhyming couplets
  • AABB Rhyme Scheme

Make sure that when you turn your poem in, you let me know who your partner is so he/she can get credit as well.

We are using The Passionate Shepherd and The Nymph’s Reply as a model, so if you need to see what the poem should look like, go look at the poems we read yesterday.

4/9/14

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We then watched the opening scene from Beauty and the Beast and compared/contrasted it with Beauty and the Beat, by Todrick Hall.

B&B

Then, we talked about the word pastoral and the related words naive, country, and provincial.

provincial

We then read and annotate the Passionate Shepherd and The Nymph’s Reply.

Here is poem 1.

Passionate Shepherd

We had a few students who I woo’d with promises of love and nature.

20140409_092618 20140409_102912 20140409_134426 20140409_134435

Walter Raleigh read that poem and thought it was ridiculous. Kinda like I thought when I first heard Bruno Mars’ “Grenade.” So he wrote a response:

nymph

Then, we partnered up with a buddy to do the Persuasion Partner Pre-Writing (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4).

Here is my example that I did:

step 2Here are my ideas for what a mother might say to a teacher to try and convince her/him to pass her failing child:

step 3Here are my ideas as to how the teacher might respond to the parent:

 

step 4Try to get as many ideas as possible so that writing the poem tomorrow will be easy!

2/21/2014

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All the late major grade items have been graded and are in Blackboard!

Today, we just wrote the Persuasive Essay. Here is my rubric (how I’m grading them)

rubricThis is the last day that we will work on this essay in class – it will be on Tuesday. That means that ZEROS will go in on Tuesday.

Make sure you are here – we will be “pimping” our memoirs out again to make sure they are ready to publish by Spring Break!

4/17/2013

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Today, we honed our persuasive skills by writing a letter to Mrs. Ekster asking her to allow someone to teach the Bible as Literature class at Vistas.

There is a pre-writing activity in LMS that you will print out and complete before writing your letter. Rather than persuade with ethos or pathos, we will focus on logos, which is logic. That means you need to have logical reasons why this class should be offered here. You may need to use the internet to help you organize your ideas, In fact, I heartily recommend it!

One thing that I want to remind you of is that a Bible as Literature class is NOT the same thing as a religion class. We cannot teach religion classes in a public school, so if you try to use religion as a reason why we need to allow a Bible class as an elective, that wouldn’t be appropriate.

The pre-writing is due today; – the paper is due on Friday.

4/16/2013

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We started off the day with a pop quiz over the Bible! On my own, I earned 15/25. 1st block (Thanks to Josh A. and Felipe), earned a whopping 19/25. 2nd and 3rd Block earned a measly 14/25.

Then, we read the background of the King James Bible and discussed what the differences are between teaching the Bible as Literature (or History) and a religion class.

Then, we read Ecclesiastes 3:1 –

This was the perfect example of how the Bible can be considered a piece of literature.

Then, we read Psalms 3:1

This was an example of how the Bible can be literature and still be a religious text at the same time.

Then, we read our last bit for the day – the Parable of the Prodigal Son:

If we had time, Riley played a game where she played music and you had to find the what part of the Bible it was alluding to (one of the three things we just read), but this wasn’t a grade.

Lastly, we answered three questions in the discussion board – The Bible as Literature Discussion Board. Make sure you REPLY to each question – you can find REPLY in the lower left hand corner of your screen.

4/4/2012

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The sun has set for us with hard core carpe diem poems – we are moving on to Pastoral poetry – that’s the folder with the world on it. Carpe diem had the sun on the folder; pastoral poetry has the land because it takes places in an idealized countryside setting.

The poems can be saved to OneNote – they are the Pastoral poems file. First, we read The Passionate Shepherd and took notes. Get the notes from a good classmate. How romantic and naive! Note this poem has an AABB rhyme scheme, 6 stanzas, 4 lines per stanza, and 8 syllables per line.

Then we read the response poem: The Nymph’s Reply. This was the shut down – all the things the Shepherd offered the girl were only temporary. She also took the imagey in the first poem and twisted it, making it negative.

Then, we downloaded the the Seduction/Denial file – that’s our pre-writing. Fill out steps 1-4 and then start writing your OWN Seduction/Denial poems.

  • 2 poems.
  • 6 stanzas each.
  • rhyme scheme AABB

If you missed today (Melissa), you are stuck on your own. 🙁 Just get through the first two stanzas and it will get easier.