Design a short, interactive activity that the HS students could complete in about 30-45 mins that would help them understand and apply any of the information we’ve discussed this week. You can use the materials you’ve read during these first two weeks in your activity, but you can also use texts from outside of the class, both academic and non-academic.
For your activity, you can assign readings from the materials we’ve read (or from your own experience). You can assume the classroom you’re teaching in has a computer and screen where you could show students something online. You can also assume that the students have some kind of technology (their phones, laptops, or tablets) to access the internet, if you want them to look something up or post something to Canvas, individually or in groups.
For example, if you were asking students to apply their understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical situation, you could have them look at a speech that went viral: What speech would have them watch? What would you ask them to think about and analyze as they watched and responded to the speech? Would you have them write or talk about the speech individually or in groups?
Requirements
In addition to the activity, include a few sentences explaining the approach you’ve taken.
There are no real length requirements for the activity, though you want to have an activity that is well-developed enough that it could last for 30-45 minutes (or a bit more) in an AP English class. See below for sample.
You can write out the individual steps in the activity or describe them more generally, as long as you give us enough information so that we can understand what you would ask the students to relates to the terms we’ve been discussing this week (rhetoric, rhetorical situation, composition, process, or any of the threshold concepts you read about.
If you cite an outside text (video, text, podcast, whatever) please include at least a link to that text in your activity.
Sample Activity
Here’s one such interactive activity I use when defining rhetoric with classes. Your activity doesn’t have to be structured in the same way, but I’m trying to give you a sense of what your activity description might look like.
Defining Rhetoric Activity
OVERVIEW: In this activity, we will define rhetoric for ourselves, learn about multiple classical and contemporary definitions, and try to revise our own definition of rhetoric that we can use as we continue to use the term in our reading and writing for the rest of the semester.
WRITE: Individually, spend 5 minutes writing in response to the following questions:
What is rhetoric? How have you defined rhetoric for yourself?
Where does your definition come from? (the media, at home, in other courses, etc.)
DISCUSS: Spend 10 mins discussing and sharing responses as a class.
READ HANDOUT: Distribute and have students read the rhetoric definitions handout by Dr. Keith Gilyard with classical and contemporary definitions of rhetoric.
WRITE: Individually, spend five minutes doing the following:
Circle or put a star next to the definitions that appeal to you.
Spend a few minutes writing (on the same sheet of paper), about how these definitions add to your previous definition.
Why do these particular definitions appeal to you?
DISCUSS: In small groups, share your writing, discussing which definitions you were drawn to and why.
DISCUSS: Move to a larger class discussion of the definitions people picked, which they didn’t pick, and how those definitions relate back to their first definition of rhetoric from the beginning of the activity.
