One of the things I love the most about teaching nonfiction texts is teaching rhetorical analysis and watching students get it. After teaching my students about ethos, pathos, logos, and a variety of rhetorical devices in two different speeches, I wanted to see if they got it on their own, so I assigned a collaborative rhetorical analysis project. To set up the project, I printed copies of historical and political speeches that we had not reviewed yet: The Space Shuttle Challenger Address, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream, President George W. Bush’s 9/11 Address to the Nation, and JFK’s Ich bin in Berliner. With the exception of I Have a Dream, all of the speeches are about the same length. I printed out enough copies for each group to have one speech each, and then I collated the speeches so that I could hand them out at random. The students did not have a say in which speech they were given. I gave each student group a piece of chart paper, markers, and a copy o...

After reading a novel or chapter, I used to assess my students’ understanding with a quick, multiple-choice test. It was an easy way to quickly assess (and quickly grade) student learning, but it didn’t really engage my students in active learning. Then I tried something new. I still assigned the same multiple-choice test to my students, but I had my students complete the test in small groups. In addition to answering each question, I also required them to cite textual evidence that supported the answer they selected, so it was an open-book task. I told them that they were not allowed to guess on the assignment; they had to work together to complete the assignment. The results were amazing! The prep work was minimal (if anything). The students had fun, were engaged, and learned to work together. Not only did the students collaborate to complete the task, the discussion that this activity generated was amazing. My freshmen were debating which answer was the ...