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My students are learning about rhetoric and are using “Letter from Birmingham Jail” as their mentor text. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a great mentor text when teaching about rhetoric because Dr. King had to challenge the local religious leaders’ view of him as a troublemaker. He also had to call them out on their inaction even when their own religious code of conduct would suggest that they should take action. He had to explain why doing nothing in the face of violence and constant discrimination is a horrible thing to tell people when you yourself don’t know what that feels like. And at the end of all this, he still had to make sure that even though he scolded them, rightfully so, that they would come to his side and give their support. Those are a lot of things to balance and communicate all in one letter. But Dr. King was a pro at it.
There are multiple things that I do in my unit to make sure students have the background knowledge and skills to tackle a complex text like Dr. King’s.
Step 1: Establish background knowledge and stir up thinking
The first thing I do is have students consider statements related to Dr. King’s work. I loved this great Pre-Reading Activity from Carla McLeod on TPT. It’s worth the purchase and helps stir up deep thinking in the classroom. ( And no, this is not sponsored, I just appreciate great curriculum.) There are also video links about Dr. King from Common Lit. Yes, you can go straight to Youtube, but I don’t always have time to pre-screen videos so I trust Common Lit to choose sources that are reliable and great for learning.
This goes back to the Structured Literacy Guide from the New Mexico Public Education Department. Students need many interactions with vocabulary terms and Dr.King’s letter has a lot of terms that students need assistance with. Each handout I use is designed to model the Structured Literacy Guides protocol for vocabulary building.
The first handout in my TPT is designed to gauge what students know. Every group is different and it’s important to teach where they are at. After the handout, I keep the words projected on the board and we begin studying the word parts of each word and see if our knowledge of prefixes and roots can help us to figure out what they mean.
The second handout is the essential work of discovering the definitions on your own. I have guidelines I give my students such as no copying and pasting definitions from the internet. They must write it in their own words. I make sure to model this because it is a skill that they struggle with.
The third handout requires them to sort concepts together with shared meanings. This is by far one of the most difficult tasks. My students work as a team and use notecards to label them. Groups share out how they sorted their words into categories.
The last handout is independent work. Students need to use the words in a paragraph.
Step 3- Annotating the Text
I created abridged copies of “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Each paragraph is numbered. It was available to students in Google Classroom via Google Docs and I always have printed copies for those who prefer a physical one. Here is a preview of the handout I give students. Dr.King’s work is not in the public domain, but you can create your own handouts for use in your classroom. So I am unable to provide you access to mine.
I always have an annotation protocol and we annotate the first paragraphs together. My students are very comfortable with this because we use this reading protocol multiple times in my class. It is the only way for me to guarantee that students are actually reading and not doing fake reading. I grade them on their annotations.
Step 4- Pulling from the text
For this unit I wanted students to analyze the key rhetorical strategies Dr. King implemented and discuss how they helped his argument. I used this graphic organizer and we did some together in class.
At my school, our students' weakest area on the SAT was analysis. So I really push assignments like this one that have to make students think about how the authors are helping or even hurting their arguments at times.
Step 5- Applying your thinking into writing via essay
The essay prompt I designed is modeled after common SAT prompts, “Analyze how the author develops a central idea.” In NM students take the SAT and I want to make sure my students are comfortable with those types of essay prompts.
For grading essays, I use a checklist which I post beforehand. I do not enjoy rubrics which have always felt vague and subjective to me. I feel like my checklists give me more grading precision and actually speed up the process of grading.
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