Assignment 1 Materials

How to use these materials

While the lesson plans explain how to implement activities, the materials are conceptualized as anything that you would project on a screen or print as a handout for students. There is one materials document for each major assignment, and each document is divided by week (Note: for TR lesson plans, some activities may appear in a previous or subsequent week due to the necessary shifting for a TR schedule). You will see links in some places to online materials, including online genre examples and Google Slides presentations. These materials are easiest to navigate via the Navigation pane, found by clicking on View -> Navigation Pane. You will also see that you will have several options for some activities in these materials so that you may choose the one that best suits your teaching style.

Week 1

Student Introductions & Icebreakers

Choose one of the introduction activities below, or use another that allows students to make connections with each other while encouraging participation and community.

Option 1: In this activity, students pair up and interview each other; then they introduce each other to the rest of the class. Here are instructions, which you might put on an overhead:

Introductions

  • Pair up with someone near you who you do not know. Take a few minutes to find out interesting things about your partner—you can ask the typical questions (name, major, hometown, etc.) but also try to find out something unusual, unique, funny, and/or amazing.
  • In a few minutes, I’ll ask you to introduce your partner to the class, so be sure to jot down notes.

Option 2: This activity is a version of option 1, but it helps add a bit of fun and humor and ensures that students have something unique or interesting to share with the class.

Introductions

For this activity you will interview one of your classmates then introduce him/her to the class.

Find out the following about your partner:

  • Your partner’s name
  • Your partner’s year in school (first, second, etc.)
  • Your partner’s hometown
  • Your partner’s major

And then, choose ONE of the following questions for your partner to answer:

  • If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get and why?
  • What is one goal you’d like to accomplish during your lifetime?
  • When you were little, who was your favorite cartoon character and why?
  • What is the most embarrassing CD you own?
  • If you could visit any place in the world, where would you choose to go and why?
  • What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
  • Tell us about a unique or quirky habit of yours.
  • If you had to describe yourself using three words, they would be…

Option 3: In this activity, students introduce themselves with the usual name, hometown, and academic interest information, but they also offer the class one true statement and one untrue, and the class has to try to identify which is which. Was this girl really born in a submarine, or did she just date Lance Armstrong’s nephew? Let the fun begin!

Closely Reading an Image: Option 1

After looking closely at the image above, think about these three questions:

  • What is going on in this picture?
  • What do you see that makes you say that?
  • What more can you find?

Updated: April 1, 2016

This week’s image comes from the Jan. 27, 2016 “Pictures of the Day” slide show on the Lens blog. The original caption reads:

A Greek man grabbed a bag of tangerines as farmers handed out free produce in Athens to protest government plans to overhaul the pension system.

You can more about the protests onReuters.

How does reading the caption and learning its back story (i.e. CONTEXT) help you see the image differently?

Closely Reading an Image: Option 2

After looking closely at the image above, think about these three questions:

  • What is going on in this picture?
  • What do you see that makes you say that?
  • What more can you find?

Updated: April 8, 2016

This week’s image comes from the March 25, 2016 “The Week in Pictures” slide show on the Lens blog. The original caption reads:

Heiner Goebbels’s staging of Louis Andriessen’s “De Materie” arrived in the vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory on Tuesday, with dozens of sheep from the Pennsylvania countryside that areamong the cast.

In “A New Breed of Opera Diva: Sheep,” Michael Cooper reveals more about the animal stars of the opera:

The unlikeliest stars of New York’s spring opera season were raised humbly in rural Pennsylvania on pop and country-western music, but they are already showing prima donna tendencies. Not only did a whole new dressing room have to be built for them backstage, but it also had to be soundproofed and kept fully stocked with their favorite snacks: grain and a hay mixture of timothy, orchard grass and red clover.

The scene-stealers in question are the 100 sheep that appear in an eerie, endearing section near the end of Heiner Goebbels’s dreamlike staging of Louis Andriessen’s “De Materie,” a Dutch avant-garde work from 1988 being performed in the cavernous Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory through Wednesday.

…

How does reading the caption and learning its back story (i.e. CONTEXT) help you see the image differently?

The Conversation Model

Writing as Conversation

WTL (Write-to-Learn): Bittman & Introduction to Course Theme

WTL (Write-to-Learn)

Directions: Write for 10 minutes on the following questions. You may use the same paper as the activity earlier to read an image.

  1. What are some of the complex connections between food and other contexts (politics, economics, etc.)? Be sure to describe specific ways that food affects those contexts.
  2. Rachel V. Vernon, a CSU alumni, writes, “As a person of Yaqui and Mescalero Apache descent, I have a long history of personal engagement with Native people within the context of community…What my research found was that food cannot be disentangled from people and relationship;…food is the sinew that holds communities together. Food helps build cultural knowledge and practice, satisfies health holistically by satisfying emotional and physical needs, and brings people together through the act of producing, consuming, and distributing foods.”
  3. Take a moment to consider how food has affected your life in one of the ways that Vernon points out (e.g. Do you have a food that you eat as part of a tradition or a holiday? Do you have a food that you eat to satisfy an emotional need, like a comfort food?).
  4. Then, write about how that food shapes and impacts that part of your life. Do others partake in preparing and/or eating that food? Is it something you share with others? Is it something you enjoy alone?

WTL – Nellum & Harmon

WTL

  1. Who is Nellum’s audience in “Fighting Food Insecurity on Campus,” and what suggestions does he provide to help alleviate the problem?
  2. How is golden rice different from other GMOs?

Sharing Annotations Directions

Sharing Annotations

Directions: Work with a partner and discuss the following questions about your annotations for the two assigned articles:

How did you decide when to annotate in the margin?

Where did you ask a question? Give a reaction?

What would you include as the thesis and key points in a summary?

3-Pass Reading

3-Pass Reading

First Pass

  • Read all the way through for comprehension – your purpose is to understand the thesis and key points of the text.

Second Pass

  • Read to understand the perspective/context of the author
  • E.g. institutional association, roles, apparent values and beliefs, perspective, bias, etc.

Third Pass

  • Read to analyze the construction of the text (evidence selected, organization, tone, register, etc.) AND how these observable elements of the writing reflect the combination of main point (first pass) and context (second pass).

Week 2

The Rhetorical Triangle

Rhetorically Analyzing Cereal Boxes Handout

Analyzing Cereal Boxes with the Rhetorical Situation

In composition, we use the word “rhetoric” in a wide sense. In this class the definition of rhetoric will be using language (or other communication strategies) to achieve a purpose with an audience.

Directions: In your groups, fill out the grid below for the cereal box assigned to your group.

Rhetorical Feature / Cereal box element(s) that I analyzed for that rhetorical feature
What is the genre?
Cereal box / The text on the front of the box that provides the name of the cereal.
Who is/are the audience(s)?
Who is the author?
What is/are the purpose(s)? How is the purpose achieved?
What is the context?
How effectively does the cereal box achieve its purpose with its intended audience(s)? Explain.

Blank Key Point Summary Outline

Summary Outline:

  1. Publication Info
  2. Author:
  3. Article Title:
  4. Publication:
  5. Date of pub:
  1. Main Point/Thesis/Argument/Claim
  2. Key Points
  3. 1st Key Point (KP1)
  4. Evidence for KP1
  1. 2nd Key Point (KP2)
  2. Evidence 1 for KP2

Key Point Summary Outline – Bittman et al.

Summary Outline:

  1. Publication Info
  2. Author: Bittman, Pollan, Salvador, De Schutter

a)Article Title: “A National Food Policy for the 21st Century”

b)Publication: Medium

c)Date of pub: October 2015

  1. Main Point, aka Thesis, Argument, or Claim
  2. The US government needs to make a National Food policy to address the growing problems in health, economics equality, and the environment.
  3. Key Points
  4. The current policies are outdated and creating problems
  5. Dependence on fossil fuels
  6. “Cheap calories” leads to unhealthy Americans
  7. Not sustainable
  8. Changes in production
  9. Move toward “quality of diets over quantity of calories”
  10. Use sustainable practices like solar energy and old farming techniques
  11. Avoid using antibiotics
  12. Changes in distribution
  13. Support current anti-trust laws to promote competition
  14. Provide incentives for farmers and sellers to grow and provide healthy foods
  15. Changes in delivery
  16. Educate on healthy foods and create gardens in schools
  17. Increase use of food labels
  18. Government needs to cooperate more within departments
  19. USDA needs to avoid conflicting interests and focus more on well-being of citizens

Reading a Text Rhetorically Activity Directions

Reading a Text Rhetorically

Directions: In your groups, review your annotations from 3-Pass Reading to answer the following questions about Bittman et al.’s text:

  1. Who is the audience for this text?
  2. What affiliations might the author have? (institutional association, roles, apparent values and perspective, bias, etc.)
  3. **To answer each of these questions, consider the following features to help you determine that audience & author affiliations. Where are examples of these features, or how would you describe them?
  4. Publication
  5. Claim
  6. Tone
  7. Evidence
  8. Language/word choice
  9. References/allusions

Rhetorical Analysis#1: Commercial or Movie Trailer

Rhetorical Analysis#1: Commercial or Movie Trailer

Due Date: Wednesday, September 6th

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to rhetorically analyze a commercial or movie trailer of your choice by considering several rhetorical choices the authors made as they worked to appeal to their audience and achieve their purpose. Focus your ideas by discussing several (2-3) key rhetorical choices that helped the text achieve its purpose with its audience.

Development for Audience:

The audience for this essay will be yourself, your classmates, and your instructor (an academic audience). To achieve your purpose with your audience and develop your ideas, consider the following:

  • What is the commercial or movie trailer for? Who is the audience? What is the purpose and what is the claim?
  • How did the authors work to appeal to their audience?
  • To answer this question, you’ll need to analyze a few (2-3) rhetorical choices that the authors made to appeal to their audience and why you believe these choices helped them be persuasive.
  • Here are a few suggested rhetorical elements that you can analyze:
  • Logos appeals (How do they logically appeal to their audience?)
  • Ethos appeals (How do they build their credibility as a company, brand, or product?)
  • Pathos appeals (How do they appeal to the audience’s emotions?)
  • Counterargument(s)
  • Use of evidence
  • Organization
  • Style
  • Tone
  • Visuals (color, images, headings, etc.)
  • Sounds (sound effects, music, etc.)
  • For each rhetorical element you discuss, you’ll need to offer specific evidence from the commercial or movie trailer to support your ideas, as well as thorough development in which you explain how these choices helped the authors to effectively achieve their purpose with the intended audience.

Genre and Organization:

Your genre is a 250 word Rhetorical Analysis Essay. As with all assignments, you may go 10% over the maximum word count before receiving a penalty on your grade. Organize your ideas in your essay in a way that allows the reader to easily understand your analysis.

Style and Conventions:

Your tone and “voice” should be appropriate for your subject matter, audience, and the academic context in which you’re writing. Your text should be grammatically correct and written in Standard English. Additionally:

  • Your paper should be typed and double-spaced, using Times New Roman, 12 pt font
  • Have your last name and page number in the upper right-hand corner of each page
  • Have one-inch margins
  • Include a formal MLA heading consisting of your name, my name, the course and the due date for the assignment.

Rhetorical Analysis Example: Strong

Cars 3 Trailer

The trailer I will analyze is Cars 3 for my rhetorical analysis. The audience for this trailer is the youth. The purpose of the Cars 3 trailer is to persuade the audience to watch their movie. The author uses many techniques in order to appeal to the audience like, ethos, pathos, and visuals. In the trailer the author uses credibility because the movie comes from two big movie companies and the producers have made other appreciated movies. In the trailer they write “ From the creators of Finding Dory and Inside Out” and and that it come from Pixar and Disney. That alone is enough to build up a really strong reputation for this movie. Most of the youth has seen one of the movies they listed and if they enjoyed it then they will be persuaded to watch Cars 3. In the trailer they also use pathos in order to appeal to the audience. Cars 3 makes the person watching feel sorrowful, because this might be the main character’s last race. This movie series has been followed by many young people and now that it might be the last they will have a greater attraction for it. Another emotion they bring out of the viewer is laughter. They make some jokes in the commercial so they can have people urging for a joke while watching this movie. Lastly Cars 3 uses visuals to pull the audience in. This movie is first of all 3D, and also has amazing artwork to go along with it. In the trailer are huge silver letters, that spell short phrases so the youth is able to read it.

Rhetorical Analysis Example: Mid

The movie trailer that I decided to analyse was Mulan. Throughout this trailer they advocate the movie by showing the brief side of Mulan's story. They show parts of her life that were eventful yet emotional. They showed how disgraceful it was for her to be disguised as a man and join army. Then, they ended it with her crying and her father holding her face telling her that he is very proud. This shows pathos because it allows the viewer to sympathize with Mulan after she felt that she had let down her father. Mulan then shows emotion that most people can relate to which is the acceptance of her father. This also can be tied down with tone. The way her father said he was proud was soft and comforting. By using these two rhetorical elements, they add emotion that persuades the viewer to connect with the emotions that Mulan was feeling in that moment. This also helped enforce the fact that many people thought her actions were wrong. As the emperor narrates it is soft and sweet while the video is very harsh and gloomy. The emperor described her hardships that caused her to honor China. This trailer relates mainly to women and parents to show women empowerment, it does not always have to be a man that saves the world or a place. Women are just as equal as men.

Rhetorical Analysis Example: Low

Travel Guide

Galaxy s8. In this video the narrator takes us around the world just to show us the new features the galaxy has to offer. In this video the narrator is persuading those who are galaxy users to upgrade or to those different phone users to switch phones.

To start of the narrator tells us to pick a destination. He shows us that the new phone can buy you a boarding pass online. From there he starts talking about how one can get around the city. In the video you can see that the phone is sideways and you can be using two apps at the same time. One can adjust the apps to see less or to show more. When the girl in the video is already in the city, the narrator says she will needs a tour guide. From there the video shows the screen on where she can go to next. The narrator also says to not forget a camera, but that the galaxy’s camera will work as good as a camera. It also shows that the camera can read in Spanish, possibly any other language. Also that the camera can tell you where you are exactly.