Week 14/MWFDays 39-41; TRDays 27 & 28

November 27th to December 1st

Weekly Objectives

During Week 14, we will be moving into our final unit for CO150, the Rhetorical Analysis and Revision Plan. For this unit, students will be asked to reflect on the rhetorical choices they made in A4 and explain how and why those choices helped them appeal to their audience and achieve their purpose in A4. Then they will offer a revision plan in which they consider how their A4 argument would change if either their audience changed or their genre changed. A5 thus requires students to have a strong working knowledge of the rhetorical underpinnings of CO150, to understand the way in which various rhetorical elements are related to and affect one another, and to synthesize many different aspects of the course.

The lessons in the final unit of the course should fulfill two overlapping goals: first, to help students understand A5 and how to successfully write a rhetorical analysis and revision plan; second, to help students put the “pieces and parts” of CO150 together with metacognitive activities, helping them better understand the course as a whole. These two objectives are firmly intertwined, since a strong understanding of CO150 course concepts will help students better articulate their rhetorical choices in A4 and explore how those would change if A4 audience or genre changed.

Having just turned in the biggest assignment of the semester, students might feel that they can “check out,” so it might be a good idea to remind them of the importance of this assignment in the context of the course. Also keep in mind that students will be coming out of Thanksgiving Break, so engagement may be low and a sense of withdrawal quite pronounced. It will likely be necessary to get students re-engaged by reminding them how close they are to the end of the semester. Help students think back to all the fundamental concepts they’ve learned while helping them understand how those skills will be important in A5. During this week, work to achieve the following objectives:

·  Students will review the rhetorical situation and remember the variety of rhetorical situations they’ve encountered this semester

·  Students will practice metacognition (“thinking about thinking”) to cement understanding of key course concepts

·  Students will make connections between previous rhetorical analyses they’ve written this semester and the final assignment

·  Students will practice changing audience and genre to apply the skills they’ll need in A5

·  Students will critically analyze a sample Rhetorical Analysis and Revision Plan and assess its strengths and opportunities

Connection to Last Week:

·  Last week, before break, students turned in their Researched Argument, an assignment which asks them to fully develop an argument, following the conventions of academic writing. In doing this, they were asked to consider their audience and make rhetorically effective choices to appeal to this group. This week, students will think about A4 – and CO150 as a whole – in a new way. They’ll do metacognitive activities to consider how the various elements of CO150 overlap and connect, work on identifying and articulating their A4 rhetorical choices, and consider how changing one element (audience or genre) would change their argument.

Connection to Next Week:

·  Next week, students will engage in workshop, gain new skills for improving their Style and Conventions, and wrap up their semester in CO150.

Suggested Activities:

REVIEW THE RHETORICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF CO 150

Your students are just coming back from a fall break and entering the final unit, and they will probably need a refresher on some of the key models for the course. Showing the conversation metaphor and reviewing the rhetorical triangle should help re-orient them with the class.

§  In order to shift the responsibility to your students, you might consider calling on a couple of volunteers to come up and write the models on the board for the class. If they need help, they can always defer to their classmates.

§  Once you have reviewed the different terms as a class, have students consider the rhetorical situation as it applies to their Researched Argument. You could have them do this in writing, or discuss their ideas with a partner. This should work as a smooth transition into an explanation of Assignment 5, because many of these rhetorical elements will be the same. The only thing that changes is the assignment’s genre or audience.

Given it’s the end of the semester, it’s also worth reviewing rhetorical breakdowns for all the major assignments this semester. You could do this several ways: you could put students into five groups, assign each group a major assignment (A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5) and have them draw the rhetorical triangle for the assignment on the board. You might also put a “spin” on the activity where you display Assignments #1-5 Grid (in Assignment 5: Materials), assign each student in class a number, and have them identify that rhetorical element for that assignment (e.g., if the student gets #6 they need to identify the purpose of A2). To “cover” any spots that aren’t assigned because of absences or course enrollment, you could fill those in yourself or assign a few go-getters two different numbers to complete the grid.

Once the class has completed the grid and correctly identified the various elements for each assignment, ask students to look at the information and draw conclusions: what do you notice looking at the information in this format? What trends do you see? What seems to stand out to you? Having the rhetorical elements displayed in this format might lead to some new insights. If students don’t get there on their own, you might help them notice:

·  The rhetorical situation changes for every major assignment. Rather than having students write the same assignment five times, they instead had to re-assess their rhetorical situation each time and respond to it accordingly. This type of writing mimics the type of writing they’ll do outside of CO150, whether in other classes or outside of school, where students are constantly writing in different genres, for different audiences, with different purposes.

·  The assignments become longer and more complex as the semester continues. This is because students are building skills (i.e., taking what they learned in A1 and using it in A2; using the skills from A1 and A2 in A3, etc.)

·  The author remains the same throughout all assignments. This may seem like an obvious insight (or not even a real “insight” at all), but it isn’t a useless thing to notice: in fact, it could be an opportunity to point out that CO150 tends to focus more on audience than author. Some first-year writing programs at other universities focus a lot on the author, having students do a lot of personal narratives and personal essays to explore their positions as authors. CSU’s program focuses less on the author and more on building skills to write for various audiences.

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

This activity transitions nicely into helping students to better understand what they are doing in their rhetorical analysis paper and revision plan. A5 is a way of “putting the pieces” of CO150 together and will demonstrate their keen understanding of these rhetorical elements. It might also be worth mentioning to them that they have been considering rhetorical elements throughout the entire semester and have already written three brief rhetorical analyses.

Although your students should have a strong understanding of rhetorical elements, at this point, it will be helpful to show them how a rhetorical analysis essay might be organized. In going over the assignment sheet, you might hit on the different things that must be included in their paper, or you might show them a potential outline. It might also be a good idea to show them an example so that they can see how they could potentially structure their own ideas.

§  Once you have presented this info to students, have them practice writing an analysis paragraph about a text (written or visual) to solidify these concepts. They might write it about a text that they bring in (asking them to bring in effective advertisements or other visual rhetoric can be fun), or you might introduce a new text for the students to analyze. Have them respond to the Rhetorical Analysis Practice Questions (in Assignment 5: Materials), in paragraph form.

§  You might have students write this as a group or individually. If you are short on time, you could consider having them do it on Canvas or for homework. Explain to students that these are similar to the questions they’ll be asking themselves about their own A4 papers as they rhetorically analyze it in A5.

§  It might also be worth pointing out the similarities and differences between the short rhetorical analyses they’ve completed this semester and A5. After all, rhetorical analysis is not a new skill since students have been practicing it all semester; however, there are some distinct differences between the short rhetorical analyses and A5.

Similarities / Differences
Examining rhetorical elements closely / Length (A5 is obviously longer!)
Explaining how they contribute to the success of the text / They will rhetorical examine their own work, not someone else’s
Using evidence from the text to support your assessment of the text’s effectiveness / They will take the critical a step further with a revision plan

REVISION PLAN

After providing instruction about the rhetorical analysis portion of A5, design a critical thinking exercise that gets students to consider the way in which changing just one element of the rhetorical triangle – genre or audience – affects the text as a whole. The Rhetorical Situation Game in the A5: Materials provides one option for helping develop these skills (directions are below, and the materials has the slips of paper to pass out to groups). If using the Rhetorical Situation Game it’s vital to make those all-important connections to course concepts and the students’ own writing. The game can be fun and silly, but be sure students realize that it’s providing valuable prep for their own A5 revision plans and isn’t simply a fun diversion from the “real” work of the course.

·  For this game you’ll want to have a way of randomly assigning genre and audience to the students. Dice work well; one can be the “audience” die and one can be the “genre” die, with each number corresponding to a different audience and genre. For instance: rolling a 1 might mean the audience is their boss; rolling a 2 means the audience is their grandma, etc. Rolling a 1 on the “genre” die might mean writing in a tweet, rolling a 2 might mean a text message, etc.

·  Have students make small groups of 3-4 around the room. Give each group a slip of paper with a few parts of the rhetorical situation filled in (some examples are included below). Roll the dice to find out who the audience is and what the genre is. Give students a few minutes to respond to their rhetorical situation. Have them share with the class. Then roll the dice to change the genre only and have students write in this new genre to their audience. Have them reflect on how they have to change their writing because the genre changed. Do the same for audience: roll the dice, change the audience, and have students write in the same genre but to a new audience.

Late in week 14 or perhaps early in week 15, it’s worth assigning the A5: Rhetorical Analysis and Revision Plan Idea Organizer (in Assignment 5: Materials) as homework for students. This will be a valuable process tool for helping them get their ideas about their rhetorical analysis and revision plan on paper before trying to dive head-first into the essay itself.

METACOGNITIVE ACTIVITIES

In addition to the course surveys that students are asked to fill out, it is a good idea to have students engage in metacognitive writing. This allows students to reflect on their learning this semester as well as offers you some feedback on your students’ experience and learning. The Assignment 5: Materials have a few different options for metacognitive activities that help students “zoom out” on the semester and consider their thinking and learning as a whole.

Regardless of which reflective, metacognitive activity you undertake, please do NOT grade your students on this activity. It’s OK to assign points for participating, but the purpose here is to get them thinking about their thinking, not to evaluate that thinking.

Option #1: Green Light/Yellow Light/Red Light

These prompts should help to give you a sense of what your students found helpful, what they found engaging, and what they found meaningful. These responses can work to better inform your planning and considerations for the following semester.

Option #2: Letter to Future CO150 Students

Another option for this is having students reflect in the form of a letter by responding to this prompt. If there is time, you might consider having each student share something meaningful that they learned this semester.

Option #3: What Will Stick With You?

Bring sticky notes for your students and have each student write their name and one idea, concept, skill, or process that will “stick with them” when they leave CO150 and the semester is over. Have each student stick their sticky note to a piece of notebook paper and then pass them around randomly so they have someone else’s sticky note in front of them. Then project the CO150 course objectives (found on your course syllabus) and have them spend a few minutes explaining which objective(s) the concept/idea/skill/process falls under and why. Have students share their ideas.