Using Current Events in AP Lang

The AP Language class offers unique learning opportunities as the texts we read and topics we discuss can range across time and region. One of my personal goals as an AP Language teacher is to have my students become global citizens, which I'm sure is something most AP Lang teachers have in common. The most effective way I help students engage with the world is through the journal explode process.

A mentor of mine taught AP Language for many years and impressed upon me the importance of having students connect rhetorical analysis and argumentation skills to current events and topics. He crafted an easy-to-implement strategy that I have used religiously over my 4 years teaching AP Lang. It works like this:

Step 1: I scour the news in search for thought provoking current events. I often visit sites like Room for Debate, TED Radio Hour, or Politico. I find a topic that is intriguing, but not overly sensitive or partisan in nature. I want the topic to elicit critical thinking, so I am careful to not select topics that my students will lose sight of their argument in their emotions. Then, I form a two-part prompt similar to the structure of a Q3 prompt on the exam. I provide students background information about the event or situation and then ask them to either 1) defend, challenge, or qualify a statement or 2) examine the considerations. 

I train my students to evaluate current events through the $SEEITT strategy. $SEEITT stands for:
$ = economic implications
S = safety concerns
E = ethical concerns
E = environmental implications
I = international relations
T = technological concerns
T = time implications

I teach them that all successful arguments focus on at least one of those considerations. Those arguments focus on fact and risks instead of pure emotion.

Step 2: In class, I have these prompts projecting on the board as students enter the class. I review the prompt and provide any additional background knowledge the students might need that I couldn't fit onto the slide. From there, the students free-write for 5 minutes and craft an argument and evidence. We then share out and debate for about 7-10 minutes. As students discuss the situation, other students may take note of evidence used by their peers in their notebooks.

Here are a few examples of my daily journals:

1. Inspired by this article:

Journal: Starting January 1, everyone in France over the age of 15 became an organ donor unless they “opted-out” in the country’s refusal program. Every day 22 Americans die while they wait on the transplant list. What should we consider ($SEEITT) about organ donation?

D, C, Q: America should change from an opt-in system to an opt-out system.

2. Inspired by this article:

Journal: The number of 18- to 35-year-olds seeking prenups is on the rise nationwide, but many millennials are more interested in protecting intellectual property — such as films, songs, software and even apps that haven’t been built yet — than cash.

D, C, Q: Prenuptial agreements should only cover physical or monetary property.

Some days I will simply use a Q3 prompt we do not have time to actually write in class. My students have no idea that it is a prompt, so it is a good way to help them see how the daily journals connect to the exam and their ability to craft meaningful, nuanced arguments on the spot. 

Step 3: Once a month my students select a journal and "explode" it into a full argumentative essay. I do not require a specific number of paragraphs, but I often assign them specific rhetorical moves and techniques to try out as they go (anaphora, epistrophe, staccato sentences, etc.).

I love this easy-to-implement daily writing because it helps me focus on argument development every day. It also serves as a formative assessment which ultimately leads to a summative assessment. Our daily discussions create a strong sense of community as students often develop beliefs and find their voice about global topics many of them wouldn't encounter until they graduate or become adults.

How do you incorporate current events into your classroom?

Lesson: Comparing Contexts

One of the keys to successful Rhetorical Analysis is the ability to  apply the understanding of context. How does the situation of the text impact the author's decisions?

In particular, the Question 2 passage the past two years have been speeches with specific contextual situations (Chavez on Martin Luther King and Thatcher on Reagan). In order to do well in their analysis, students needed to consider how the situation impacted the author's rhetorical moves.

While vital to understanding, this is also something that students really struggle with, in my experience.

I've often wondered why they find this so difficult. To me it seems so simple: the context is that which surrounds. The time and place the speech is given, audience prior experience and mood, speaker background and reputation. For me, context is a deep and exciting exploration into background information. But students seem to balk at the mere word, I suppose because it's an abstract concept.

So I developed a lesson that helps them dig deeply into context and explore how those contexts impact the text.

I begin with two texts that have similar but not identical contexts. The two that I love for this activity are Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor Address and George W. Bush's 9/11 Address. I like the clear similarities (both presidents, both addressing attacks on home soil) and also the clear differences (very different circumstances of attacks, different audiences who had different knowledge of the events).

First, I ask my students to read them once through to get the gist. They highlight anything they notice, and we clarify each speaker's purpose using vivid verbs, but we don't talk much about the speech just yet.

Next, we spend a good long time brainstorming as much as we can about each speaker, audience, and subject. I use this graphic organizer, and this year I actually had them fill it out in google-docs, which saved us the step of having to move small group-to-class brainstorm. We brainstorm as much as we possibly know about each of the three parts of the triangle (and we ignore the "analysis" section of the chart for now). It's okay if some of the points being brainstormed are not relevant to this particular speech. For example, the fact that FDR was in a wheelchair does not necessarily have a rhetorical impact on this speech, but it's part of the context of him as a speaker, so I let my students include it on the brainstorm anyhow.

After we feel like we've got a really in-depth understanding of the elements of context, we go back to the speeches. I usually have them split up, and now we talk more in depth about each author's choices; I do this early in the year, so this is a pretty bare-bones "what do you notice?" conversation, but it's our first step towards analysis.

For example, students might notice that FDR spends most of the beginning of his speech outlining exactly what happened, where, and by whom. They notice his repeated use of "Last night, the Japanese..." And that leads to a conversation: Why did he do that? What did he know about his context that caused him to start out with that? Students usually recognize that FDR's audience needed the details of the attack because most of them hadn't personally witnessed it. They might say that his primary audience was reluctant to enter the war, so they needed mounds of hard evidence to persuade them of its necessity.

On the contrary, students notice that Bush doesn't spend as much time describing the attacks, because by the time he delivered this address, most of his audience had seen them happen on television. They notice that Bush's tone is more comforting, and more of an attempt to bolster the spirit of the American people. These are all choices that are informed by Bush's understanding of the subject and his audience.

We will usually spend two 75 minute blocks on this activity. After we're done with this conversation, I will ask my students to write a paragraph describing the relevant elements of context, and a very simple attempt at an analysis paragraph (I usually ask them to identify the author's purpose and then connect one element of context to one choice that the speaker made: "Because ____ knew _____, he chose to ______").

The next class period, I will put some of their paragraphs up on the doc cam so we can talk about which paragraphs are on target and which ones are weaker at showing logical connections between context and choices.

This has worked well for me. I really love it because inevitably we'll get back to context later in the year and they'll go back to brainstorming only a few details for each element of the triangle. They say "I don't know, what's context again?" And I can always refer them right back to their chart from this lesson so they can be reminded of the depth at which context can be considered.

#aplangchat Spring 2017 Schedule!

Hope everyone had great holidays! Here is a “plan” for the rest of the 2016-2017 school year.

We’ve decided to continue our monthly combo chat with the AP Lit folks on the first Sunday of every month during their regular time slot from 9-10pm ET. We’ll be using the hashtag #apeng for those sessions only.

On weeks when we do #apeng on Sunday, we will not do a formal Lang Chat the following Wednesday. During our regular time slot that week, feel free to jump on and chat with each other about your needs using the #aplang hashtag during our regular time (8-9pm ET), but there will be no formal questions.

All other weeks we will be on our regular Wednesday schedule, except breaks for holidays as noted below. I’m asking the #aplangchat community to assist with hosting duties once per month. Please send me a message if you would like to host on one of the dates indicated below

Here’s a chart for each month to help clarify.