Phase 1 Teaching Sequence
- Provide working definitions of “rhetoric” and “green”
- Introduce the theme: The Rhetoric of Green
- Assess our starting point: explore prior knowledge
- Comprehensive survey of examples students discover about “green”
- Introduce writing as a conversation, and make the point that the beginning of any conversation is to listen closely to what is being said and how it is being said (in other words, close and critical reading)
- Focus on close and critical reading (via following texts):
- “A Path of Hope for the Future” by Daniel Quinn
- “Green, Greener, Greenest” by Daniel Stone and Anne Underwood
- “To Remake the World” by Paul Hawken
- Focus on summary writing (expanding from reading-for-thesis to reading-for-argument)
- Focus on critical reading: reading rhetorically
- Introduce the rhetorical triangle
- Revisit the writing as a conversation metaphor
- Read texts (listed above) for purpose, audience, and context, focusing on writers’ strategies for focus, development, organization, coherence—
- Audience: How do we respond and why? What assumptions are made about the audience? What are the implications of those assumptions? What effect does the article have? Can we identify features that caused the effect?
- Purpose: What is the writer’s intention? What does she or he do to try to reach that? How well does her or his purpose fit with ours as readers?
- Context: Where was this published? What kind of information does it use and how was it gathered? How does our knowledge of context influence our reading
- Focus on even deeper critical reading using the following texts:
- “Is There a Better Word for Doom?” moderated by Maywa Montenegro
- “Climate Change: Now What” by Christine Russell
- “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard (a web film)
- “A Cautionary Video About America’s Stuff” by Leslie Kaufman (an article about Leonard’s web film)
- “Dark Green Doomsayers” by George Will
- “The 11th Hour” (focusing on the various experts interviewed)
- Understanding of the rhetorical situation and how to evaluate information
- Develop criteria for assessing the quality of content (timeliness, accuracy, credibility/authority, accessibility, objectivity)
- Re-read articles to assess the effectiveness of their use of green rhetoric
- Consider questions, ideas and other points for discussion
- Study and analyze established blogs composed by experienced writers addressing wide audiences
- Write a blog entry that synthesizes materials and initiates a critical discussion with the class community
- Respond thoughtfully to classmates’ blogs
