Kirk's Corner

Here’s the news flash – students just don’t care for Puritan Plain Style.

For today’s lesson, I started out with reading the text several times and thinking about what it is that makes his sermon effective. Once again, I wanted to reiterate the elements of breaking down complex sentences, but then I wanted to bring in the rhetoric used in the lesson. I decided to model it after my thinking and have students look at the complex sentences before thinking about the rhetoric which makes the sentence matter.

For modeling, my questions became:
1. What is he saying?
2. How is he saying it?
3. Is he effective in getting his message across?
4. What is it that makes it effective?

For skills, I wanted to look at rhetorical devices, but the first step was looking quickly at ethos, logos, and pathos. I was quite fortunate in that the majority of my students were able to look at a blank triangle and put in the terms. I asked to students to tell me what they remembered, and I didn’t have to go into the detailed lessons reteaching the basic appeals.

At this point, I followed the suggestion of the text and looked at specific rhetorical elements of metaphor, simile, imagery, appeal to fear, and antithesis.

Here, I moved directly through the reading of the text and had students complete the reading guide.

At the end of the lesson, I wanted students to be able to identify and evaluate rhetorical elements in a speech in terms of what the speaker is saying, what he means, and how he wants it to affect the audience. In the end, I’m not sure students were able to get antithesis and implied metaphor.

Fortunately, these skills can be revisited as we move on through the next few readings so the students will be ready for the module assessment in two weeks.

Also, I will post the reading guide and a link asap. It will probably be free and just the reading guide because I’m not ready to post the PPT as I feel it needs some revision. (Link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sinners-in-the-Hands-of-an-Angry-God-Text-Dependent-Questions-Reading-Guide-875141)

Suggestions? Let me know.