Grade Levels: 7^th grade

Subject/Topic Areas: World War II, Propaganda, Persuasive Writing

Time Frame: 6 weeks

School: Pride Academy CharterSchool, East Orange, NJ

Persuasive Unit Pre-Test. Multiple Choice: 1) Consumerism is: a. A desire toward the buying of popular goods. The belief that the people should be ruled by a dictator. A disorder that forces you to eat lots. The practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business. You encounter persuasive writing everyday. Whether it's the radio announcer telling you why you should keep listening to his station, a magazine article on your favorite rock star, or even the President of the United States giving the State of the Union address, persuasive writing plays an important part in your everyday life.

Brief Summary of Unit:

Help your students plan out incredible persuasive speeches with this Writing a Persuasive Speech Worksheet.The first section of this speech template asks students to write an introduction, three points, and a conclusion. The second section, meanwhile, encourages students to use speech techniques such as metaphors, repetition, and rhetorical questions, and to tick off the techniques they use as.

Inthis unit, students will focus on World War II. Students will be assigned a historical fiction novel,leveled for their reading abilities, with which they will participate in guidedreading and literature circles. Students will also consider propaganda of the times, and through thelens of persuasive writing tactics they will analyze, comment on, and createtheir own propaganda.

Inculmination, students will work in groups to analyze the propaganda presentedin their novels and give their recommendations of the literature they wereassigned to their fellow classmates. Students will also create a persuasivespeech to a group of characters directly in or referred to in their novels. These speeches will allow students to show what they have learned about propaganda andpersuasive writing and apply it in a creative way to their reading. The unitwill conclude with a presentation of their novel analysis and their persuasivespeeches.

Essential Questions:

• Why should we study our history through novels?
• How have certain perspectives of war evolved over time and why?
• Why do certain perspectives from war have a bigger presence in our modern society?
• How can being able to identify propaganda help us as a viewer?

Students will understand that…

• World War II was a war about global domination and great mistreatment of human life.
• Propaganda was saturated into society during World War II.
• In order to understand a war, you must look at the perspectives of the “winners” and the “losers.”
• Just because a person is a soldier doesn’t mean they fully believe in the cause they are fighting.

Students will know:

• The experiences of soldiers on all sides in World War II.
• The effects of World War II on civilians in various parts of the world
• How propaganda can alter the views of a society.

Students will be able to:

• Make connections between different novels concerning different perspectives of war.
• Identify propaganda and the persuasive traits they are utilizing.
• Create a persuasive speech and connect it to their novels.

Established Goals:

READING:

• Read, respond and analyze literary works that represent a range of social, historical, and cultural perspectives
• Form opinions and make judgments about literary works, by analyzing and evaluating texts from a critical perspective
• Share reading experiences with peers
• Read, view, and interpret texts and performances in every medium from a wide variety of authors, subjects, and genres (e.g., short stories, graphic novels, cartoons, articles, advertisements, etc.)
• Identify and evaluate the purpose of sources, with assistance
• Locate and use school and public library resources for information and research

WRITING:

• Write original persuasive texts
• use elements of ethos, pathos, and logos
• maintain consistent point of view, including first-person, third-person, or omniscient narrator
• create a personal voice
• Use resources such as personal experience, knowledge from other content areas, and independent reading to create literary, interpretive, and responsive texts
• Share the process of writing with peers
• Write and share personal reactions to experiences, events, and observations, using a form of social communication

LISTENING:

• Listen to and follow complex directions or instructions
• Identify the speaker’s purpose and motive for communicating information
• Interpret and respond to texts and performances from a variety of genres, authors, and subjects
• Recognize historical and contemporary social and cultural conditions in presentation of literary texts
• Connect literary texts to prior knowledge, personal experience, and contemporary situations
• Identify multiple levels of meaning in presentation of literary texts
• Participate as a listener in social conversation with one or more people who are friends, acquaintances, or strangers
• Respect age, gender, social position, and cultural traditions of the speaker
• Encourage the speaker with appropriate facial expressions and gestures

SPEAKING:

• Express a point of view, providing supporting facts
• Express opinions and support them through references to the text
• Engage in a variety of collaborative conversations, such as peer-led discussions, paired reading and responding, and cooperative group discussions, to construct meaning
• Engage in a variety of collaborative conversations, such as peer-led discussions, paired reading and responding, and cooperative group discussions, to make applications of the ideas in the text to other situations, extending the ideas to broaden perspectives
• Express opinions or make judgments about ideas, information, experiences, and issues in literary and historical articles
• Articulate personal opinions to clarify stated positions
• Use courtesy; for example, avoid sarcasm, ridicule, dominating the conversation, and interrupting

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Organizer

Overall, this unit was challenging to plan and a puzzle to teach, but I learned a lot from the whole experience. I planned out all the lessons the week before I began teaching them, which enabled me to have a solid plan going into the first week of teaching. That planning also made it a bit harder for me to adjust to how class actually went–– having students read in class, having journals interspersed through class time, not giving enough time to introduce the infographic, trying to get through the book quickly ––and adjust my plans. Towards the end, there were times that I scrapped a lesson plan and made a new one in order to fit the class, which is how teaching goes. I made it out alive and all the better for it.

While I didn’t love the content, planning and teaching this unit made me realize how different is approaching a book with the intention of reading it versus approaching a book with the intention of teaching it. When I read Anthem, I approached it as a reader. I finished it and thought, “Well, what do I do now?” As much as everyone rags on Common Core standards, they were very helpful for me to have a grasp on what to focus on in the book. I decided to focus on themes because my mentor did in previous lessons and the themes connected with many different parts of the book. They also were pretty obvious, so students were able to pick them out somewhat easily.

I would say my perspective factored into the planning of this unit a lot but not as much into the implementing of it. While my mentor gave me the jumping off point of themes, it was my ideas to use different texts, to use signposts, to explore imagery, and to use analogies in order to deepen student’s understanding of theme. I think it is important for students to be able to pick out a quote that really gets at the heart of something (a theme, a main point, an argument, etc) and explain how that quote shows that heart. It’s something that is difficult to explain to students (and difficult to grade them on), but I see it as an important skill. I also thought it was important to get at theme in a multitude of different avenues.I was able to push towards a more constructivist approach by pulling on “formal and informal knowledge” that my students had (signposts, analogies, understanding of theme topics) and making my activities more authentic (more group work in the classroom and online, researching on the internet, constructing their own society and doing a reflection) (Oakes 166, 2013). I was able to plan on and actually present theme in a bunch of different ways, thanks to thinking through UDL, so that one, the students and I wouldn’t be sick of the themes and two, students could understand theme in a way that made sense to them. It also has the bonus of showing students that theme isn’t regulated to quotes that specifically use that word (like fear quotes don’t have to have the word “fear” in them).

I also had students do research on Ayn Rand and look at the bias of websites and compare Anthem with “The Giving Tree” because of my perspective on Rand. The research activity was somewhat similar to a jigsaw, which is an effective way for students to take ownership of their learning (Woolfolk 408, 2013). Having students do research gets them more involved and learning, and having it in a group work setting where they compare notes allows them to be the expert. It also taught them how bias affects the information presented in contexts and practically how to find that bias on the websites they pulled from. I believe this is a vitally important skill with the information on the internet and the multitude of credible and non-credible sources out there. I also didn’t want to leave the core ideas of Anthem standing by themselves without any pushback, so I thought that students could make connections between Rand and her ideas in Anthem on their own and could connect between Anthem and “The Giving Tree” in class. I wanted to get across the idea that context is important for this book and that different authors have different takes on ideas, which obviously students know. However, as a student who was very open and very easily swayed by information given to me in a classroom setting, I know how easy it is to accept something taught to me as a fact. I didn’t want that to happen with this book.

As for teaching this unit plan, I was constrained by reading the entire book in class and students needing work time. I expected students to do a majority of the reading outside of class, because that was my middle school experience, but that did not happen. This put a time crunch on my lessons and as a result my lessons got paired down to the essential teaching material. I was still able to do a variety of activities but not push back on things the way that I planned to in my unit plan. I also was constrained by my mentor teacher just by the mere fact that it is her classroom and I do not have the authority to start pushing back where she doesn’t want to push.

I think the unit plan was effective overall. There was one infographic in particular (shown above) that showed a student’s growth in how they analyzed quotes from the beginning of the graphic to the end. That was a really cool moment for me, who had felt pretty insecure about how much the students actually understood what they were trying to do in explaining quotes. My mentor had them fill out a little check in forum towards the end of the unit, and most felt pretty confident about picking out good quotes to go with themes and explaining how the quotes and the themes connect. It was rushed, and the theme infographic unnecessarily complicated the lesson a bit, but as a whole I think students understood the book, understood the themes, and understood how to explain how quotes and themes connect.

As I rode home with Justine after a particularly bad day for both of us, we both agreed that while this unit plan and class in general has been a lot of work and really tough at times, we have both learned a lot. I have learned firsthand that sometimes you don’t get to do all the cool things you planned, and the cool things that you do get to do the students complain about. I was pumped about the infographic, but students were complaining about how it was hard and “Why couldn’t we do it on Google Slides?” They had a valid point and it taught me how I cannot assume that every student is not going to be as excited or curious about new things as I am, particularly with technology. I also learned how difficult it is to remember all the things you want to do in class. There was one day that I taught the students and sent them off on an activity only to have my mentor say, “Weren’t we going to show them an example?” I then had to disrupt the students, have them focus back on me, show them the example, and then go back to working on their activity. The first hour you teach is always the guinea pig with secondary education. In pedagogical strategies, I learned that my dreams of always having deep philosophical discussions about literature all the time are just not possible, especially for middle schoolers. I needed to adjust my expectations and design a diverse amount of activities so all students were engaged in my lessons and learning in a way that works with their strengths.

Personally, I learned that getting in a classroom didn’t make me completely certain about teaching like I had hoped it would. I have loved being in a classroom, planning and teaching lessons, and getting to know my mentor teacher and students, but it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. It was difficult trying to navigate the awkward power dynamics that come with being a student aide in a classroom, but I worked it out by messing up a few times along the way. It was frustating when students didn’t respect me because I was a new face and someone younger than they expected, but the days I effectively asserted myself felt huge.It was different being in a public middle school and having to say the Pledge of Allegiance every day, but I learned how my faith still intersected with teaching in a public school. I got down on myself for not getting things right the first time but finally realized the huge learning curve that all teachers have to go through. Sitting in a classroom and leading a classroom is far from being two sides of the same coin.

I found myself flummoxed at comments that I previously imagined myself pulling students aside for and addressing, comments that revealed the racism, sexism, classism, and homophobic attitudes that still persist today. I learned that using my “privilege responsibly to help [my] students achieve academic success while retaining their cultural identity and language” through teaching that challenges “structural policies that undermine the academic success” is harder than I expected, especially in day-to-day classroom interactions (Oakes 58, 2013). But as I watched a 7th grader call out her classmate who retorted “All Lives Matter” to a piece on Black Lives Matter, I realized that structuring my curriculum, my teaching, and my influence in schools around advocating for the oppressed is vitally important. I was not able to do that much in this unit plan, which disappoints me, but it taught me the real importance of infusing both social justice and Christianity into my lesson planning and in my teaching.

Sources:

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Template

Oakes, J., Lipton, M., Anderson, L., and Stillman, J. (2013). Teaching to change the world. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Examples

Woolfolk, A. (2013). Educational psychology (New International 12th ed.) Tamil Nadu: Pearson Education.