• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Lesson
• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Strategies
• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Template
• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Analysis
• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Organizer
• Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Allocation

Focus – tragic hero

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. This unit will focus and historical fiction from World War II as well as propaganda of the times and persuasive writing in general. World War II is a pivotal time for our country, and the background knowledge students’ gleam from this unit will aid them both when faced with various texts independently and considering current events that affect them daily.

Fri 11/20 - Discuss Antony’s/Brutus’ funeral speech (read speeches) (rhetoric, persuasive speech, irony)
Mon 11/23 - Watch 2nd half of movie, Discuss suicide and misinterpreted omens/predictions
Thanksgiving break

Overview: We will begin reading Julius Caesar today. In order to frame this text, we will discuss Shakespeare’s writing style before reading. After reading the first scene, we will discuss setting and exposition.
Student Objective: I want students to become familiar with common archaic words used in Julius Caesar. I also want students to understand some of the ways Shakespeare often writes, specifically using puns and how the setting of drama is communicated without a narrator (through exposition). I also want students to begin thinking about the play, how they feel about it, and why it is important.
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
List of archaic words in Julius Caesar
Sentence Starters overhead

[Push this back to Friday (next time we see the class) - We will begin with a quiz about the presentation on the history of Julius Caesar. This should get students thinking about the time period and the play.]
After the quiz, I will put common archaic words on the board. I will ask students to write them down and predict what they mean. Then I will go over each word in context and tell the students the correct meanings. Students will create a list of these words and their meanings to refer to during their reading.
We will next discuss setting. I will talk about stage directions briefly (since this is the topic of another activity later in the unit.) We will talk about how drama shows setting and how that is different than other genres.

We will then discuss the sentence started activity so I can have a better idea of where the students are and what they expect out of this unit.
If there is time, we will begin reading the second scene.
Sentence Starters and Anticipation Guide for Julius Caesar
Before reading, the students will respond to each of the following statements:
Power and manipulation go hand and hand.
Sympathy is a stronger emotion than envy.
Violence and bloodshed never produce morally good results.
I wonder…
I’m confused about…
If I were…
I’m not sure…
One of the benefits of doing this activity is building a stronger classroom community. Not only do students think deeper about their beliefs and morals, they also share those ideas with their classmates. By reading their responses, I achieved a better understanding of who my students are as people. It was very interesting to read and comment on each student’s response. I could easily find trends within certain class periods, between genders, and within different groups of students.
The idea of student feedback seemed so brilliant to me that I could not wait to try it with my classes. Especially now, at the beginning of my teaching career, I value feedback since it will take time (probably years) to become good at gauging the class.

Overview: Today we will discuss archaic words, introduce the tragic hero, give a plot summary of JC and watch the first three acts of the movie
Student Objectives:
Begin to think about what makes a tragic hero.
Understand most of the plot to JC in preparation for the movie.
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
List of archaic words in Julius Caesar
Plot summary handouts
Julius Caesar movie
Instruction and Activities: (100 min)
Quiz over presentations. (10min)
After the short quiz, we will begin with a quick review over what we read and discussed last class. (5 min)

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Lesson

Next I will hand out copies of the plot summary and review this with the students. I will leave blanks in the text so they will have to be active and fill in some of the information. (20 min)

Movie: First three acts. (Or as far as we get with the time we have.) (30 min)
Short quiz (sentence starters maybe) about what happened in the movie to make sure students are paying attention. (10 min)
Students will be able to define the tragic hero and apply this to Brutus (so far).
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
Plot summary handouts

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Strategies

Tragic Hero handout
Julius Caesar movie
Instruction and Activities: (100 min)
We will begin with a short write about heroes. Prompt: My hero is… because… (5 min)
Then we will discuss what makes a hero. (10 min)
Next we will discuss the tragic hero handout the students received last week. We will talk about what we know about the characters in the movie so far. (10 min)
Then we will switch gears and read Brutus’ speech in the orchard. Students will do this in small groups and paraphrase it into their own words. (20 min)
We will talk about what Brutus says and what that means about his character. (10 min)
Students (in the same groups they paraphrased in) will illustrate Brutus’s speech. (30 min)
Then we will share the illustrations. (10 min)
If we have time, we will watch more of the movie (if we didn’t finish Act III last time).
Funeral Speech Chart
JC Lesson Plan day four: Caesar’s Death
Overview: Today we will focus on Caesar since last class we focused on Brutus. We will read Act 3, scene I and discuss stage directions. Than students will act out Caesar’s death scene. This lets students participate in the play and gain a deeper understanding of the factions that vie for power in the play.
Student Objectives:
Students will understand stage directions.
Students will gain a deeper understanding of the play, especially Caesar’s death.
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
Julius Caesar movie
Silent Scene handout
Instruction and Activities: (100 min)
We will watch the movie though Act III if we haven’t finished. (20 min)
I will read the death scene of Caesar. (5 min)
Discuss the 5 senses. How would the scene play out for those senses?
As a class, we will try to decide how the scene would be acted out, create stage directions, and act out silently. (60 min)
Then we will discuss how Caesar was “stabbed in the back”. We will talk about friendship and betrayal. Students will do a short write about friendship and how they felt when they were betrayed. (if time permits)
JC Lesson Plan day five: Antony’s Speech
Overview: We will read and discuss Brutus’s and Antony’s funeral speeches
Student Objectives: Students will be able to define: rhetoric, persuasive speech, irony, pathos, logos and ethos. They will be able to explain how/why the funeral speeches were effective/ineffective
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
Sensory notes chart
Notes on Rhetoric
Rhetorical Tool charts
Instruction and Activities:
After finishing Caesar’s death scene, the students will fill out the chart on sensory notes.
We will discuss why Shakespeare made his play so violent (to compete with public hangings, because of the black plague, to sell tickets, to shock audiences, to depict the death as accurately as possible.)
The students will close their eyes and imagine the scene. They will open their eyes and fill out the Sensory Notes Chart. After doing this on their own, we will go through their ideas as a class and I will write them all on the overhead. Then we will underline the most important aspect of each sense.
(I modeled an example using the classroom and it worked really well and only took about 5 extra minutes.)
After the death scene, we move on to the funeral speeches. Before reading the speeches, we took notes on rhetoric (attached).
I will explain each word using examples students would be familiar with. (Obama and his charisma for ethos or Oprah and her fame.)
Make a chart on the overhead and have students copy it down. Then re-read the speeches to the students while they mark off each literary device they hear.
Then go over each rhetorical tool and discuss how/whether it was used in each speech. Be sure to discuss prose and why Antony’s speech is written in iambic pentameter and Brutus’s is written in prose (one of the few places in the entire play where this occurs). This can be shown by looking at the visual representation of the speeches –Brutus’s is like a rectangle, all words, while Antony’s is like a poem, meant to invoke emotions.
Below their charts, have the students list an example of a rhetorical tool from each speech and explain why it was effective.
Rhetoric – the art of using language effectively and persuasively
Persuasive speech - aimed at influencing values, ideas, beliefs and attitudes used to convince people to come to a different idea, attitude, or belief
RHETORICAL TOOLS
Irony – when something happens that is the opposite of what you think would happen; unexpected
False Intent – saying the opposite of the truth; lying
Rhetorical questions – questions asked to make the listener think a certain way; the asker does not want an answer (How many times do I have to tell you to pick up your socks? Your mom doesn’t want you to say, “At least one more” or “Exactly 62.)
Ethos – appeal based on the ethical character of the person, not on what they are saying (voting for Obama bc he is charismatic, not bc you agree with his platforms; listening to Oprah just bc she’s famous)
Logos – appeal based on logic, or reason (most literary/academic papers –the kids tragic hero essays)
Pathos – appeal based on emotion or feeling (poetry)
Parallelism – using similar syntax (sentence structure, paragraph structure) within a speech or writing to emphasize an idea
Repetition – Repeating a word or phrase for emphasis
JC Lesson Plan day six: finish movie/themes and motifs
Overview: Today we will watch the rest of the movie and discuss how it ends, focusing on suicide, themes and motifs.
Student Objectives:
Students will be able to explain the play as a whole.
Students will understand the Roman ideals behind suicide.
Students will be able to pick out themes and motifs in JC.
Instructional Plan
Materials:
Julius Caesar books
Julius Caesar movie
Instruction and Activities: (100 min)
Watch the rest of the movie. (60 min)
Discuss the ending. Talk about Roman suicide. (10 min)

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Template

Have students do a quick write about the ending and what they thought the theme was. (10 min)
Some evaluation activity. (20 min)

Here is a rough outline of my essay (some body paragraphs will most likely be changed as I go):

Introduction:

Cyber bullying is a form of bullying that has been taking place a lot more in middle and high schools because of the improvement of technology and increased usage of social media networks. Something that has not really been established in these schools are punishments. Do you know if your middle school or high school had a punishment for this? Exactly. It is not very common for schools to have cyber bullies suspended. Not because of it being hard for them to get away with it, but because schools may not realize how serious of an issue this really is. Middle schools and high schools should have students who act as bullies on the internet suspended from school to teach them a lesson on what they are doing is wrong. Many students have taken their own lives because of another student saying something harmful to them online, and this needs to stop. I think that cyber bullies of middle school and high school ages should be punished because they will finally understand that what they are doing is wrong.

Body Paragraphs:

1. People say that online bullying is easier to get away with than bullying in person. This may be true but this paragraph with give reasons why people shouldn’t think this.

2. Why do teens who see cyber bullying occur right in front of them on their Twitter news feeds but do nothing to stop it?

3.Why girls are more likely to be bullied online than in person.

4. Several stories of kids who have been cyber bullied and what has been done to stop it.

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Analysis

5.Refutation (Counter Argument): Maybe it’s not the school board that the blame should be put on rather than te parents should deal with them. It is their kids so why not have the parents get involved and try to stop their children from being bullies? Some may say “it’s no one else’s business on what the do on the internet” but some parents may feel hurt that their child could actually do that.

Possible websites to use for research:

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Organizer

CNN (they have a whole page of articles about Cyber bullying)

Persuasive Speech Units. Schrader's Teaching Portfolio Allocation

Cyber bullying laws (pdf with a full list of laws in each State)