Day 31: Rhetorical Analysis Thesis Statements and Outlines pt. 2

Short List

1. Attendance Check and Warm-up
2. The Assignment
3. Thesis Review
4. Reverse-Engineering a Rhetorical Analysis Outline
5. Intro to Rhetorical Analysis Introductions

Homework:
By Monday, have a rough draft of our rhetorical analyses:

• Drafts of Introductions and Conclusions
• Outlines of Body Paragraphs 

By Friday, have an outline and thesis statement

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The Details
Schedule of events:

1. Attendance Check:
Before you sit down, please rejoin your group from Monday.

2. [10 minutes] The Assignment
I discovered that many people were confused about the nature of our current task, so I wanted to clear that up and help ensure that every one of my students succeeds in writing a rhetorical analysis essay.

1. Unit 3 Assignment Prompt and Grading Rubric
2. Your topic is not Single-Sex Schooling is Good for Girls or Reality TV is Bad
• Your topic is a rhetorical analysis of one of these four articles: 
1. Where the Girls Aren't
2. Don't Segregate Boys and Girls in Classrooms
3. Reality TV: Rewarding Bad Behavior
4. Why Reality TV is Good for Us
• The articles are argumentative either responding for or against the claim (either Single-Sex Schooling is Good for Girls or Reality TV is Bad). 
• Your job is to analyze, in-depth, the article you choose and to say:
• Is the article effective or successful at arguing its point
• Why it is effective or why it is not effective

3. [10 minutes] Thesis Review
Let's take a couple of minutes to slow down. I know that learning inductively by looking at models and examples and trying to figure out rules or how to do something is often really hard, and I think that I might have made it either too hard or just not guided enough on Monday. So, let's as a whole class look at what makes thesis statements for rhetorical analyses somewhat unique, and then let's look at the thesis statements that we wrote for today look like--do they match?

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4. [30 minutes] Reverse-Engineering a Rhetorical Analysis Outline
Now, you are equipped with a thesis for your rhetorical analysis essay, but you have not yet actually structured your outline. Here, we are going to use a real student rhetorical analysis to try and learn the basic structure. This is not a formula to follow, but a real example of a great essay that can guide you in making your own. As you draft your outline guide, make sure that it is generic enough that you can apply it to your own analyses.

Steps:

1. Read this essay
2. Fill in the pieces that ask for the function of each part
3. Compare what you decide with this document
4. Use these to create a document that will work as a general outline for your papers.
5. The scribe should make sure each group member gets a copy of this final document

4. [Remaining Time] Intro to Rhetorical Analysis Introductions
What do you remember about introductions? How do you think an introduction to a rhetorical analysis paper would be any different than an introduction to a regular argumentative essay?

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Homework:
By Monday, have a rough draft of our rhetorical analyses:

• Drafts of Introductions and Conclusions
• Outlines of Body Paragraphs 

By Friday, have an outline and thesis statement

Attribution: This lesson is from Jin Kim's and Jeff Arrigo's 2013 original lessons. I have adapted them to fit my teaching style and classroom atmosphere.