Subject: English

Focus group: Year 8, class of 30.

Learning Objectives:

• To critically engage with the topic of climate change through non-fiction writing.

• To understand and apply persuasive devices to make a convincing argument.

Overall idea: Students to apply persuasive writing within the context of climate change. Looking at Greta Thunberg's speech for inspiration as a guidance for their own writing. The purpose is to understand the importance of taking care of your own community and shared responsibility. Students with use persuasive writing to address the headteacher to try and make a reasonable adjustment to their school in the hopes of helping the school environment.

• First lesson on unit of persuasive writing.

• Have prior learning of some language devices (metaphors, similes) but no knowledge of persuasive techniques (DAFOREST, elements of rhetoric).

Context of class:

• High ability class (set 1).

• Urban setting - Coventry - able to apply urban living and experience to lessons.

Skills:

• To write persuasively using devices.

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of climate change and how language is used to change action.

Values:

• Understanding the impact of climate change.

• The importance of collective responsibility regarding the planet.

LESSON 1:

Starter: Students to think about times they have had to be persuasive (mind map). Applying to their own experiences.

Introduction to logos, pathos, ethos...

Pathos - Appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic, for example.

Logos - Appeals to the audience's reason.

Ethos - Appeals to the speaker's status or authority.

Introduction to DAFOREST

Direct Address

Alliteration/ anecdote

Facts

Opinion

Rhetorical question/ repetition

Emotive language

Statistics

Triple

AFL - Quiz to check understanding on whiteboards (DAFOREST).

Watching video of Greta Thunberg Extinction Rebellion 2018 speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKMX8WRw3fc

AFL - Greta's main ideas:

• What is her message?

• Who is her audience?

• What is her purpose?

• What is she trying to change?

• Why is it important?

Print out a section of Greta's speech:

Live annotations with visualizer of persuasive devices in Greta's speech.

Plenary:

Running through the techniques again.

Understanding of the speech

LESSON 2: Applying DAFOREST and Rhetoric to their own writing

Starter:

Retrieval practice: mix and match DAFOREST term with definition. Using examples and asking students to identify which technique is being used.

Focusing on another part of Greta's speech:

I Do. We Do. You Do.

Teacher to annotate first

Annotate as a class

Students to annotate another part of the speech on their own/pair.

Answer question for 5 minutes:

How is Greta's speech persuasive?

Purpose of this is for students to understand the effectiveness.

Adding on to Greta's speech:

Writing another section of the speech.

Success criteria

Peer mark.

LESSON 3

Applying DAFOREST to their own writing:

Task:

To write a persuasive speech to headmaster to make changes to their own schooling environment (e.g. Every Friday one form class has to pick up rubbish from playground).

Give students a list of ideas (must be realistic)

Show teacher example - pick out DAFOREST techniques.

Rest of the lesson - writing their speech to headmaster.

Students to have writer checklist, sentence starters and device checklist.

Teacher to walk around classroom and provide 1-1 support to those who need it.