Eighth Grade · Reading · week 17

Rhetoric Scrapbook

Compile and analyze a personal scrapbook of rhetorical examples from this unit, plus one new example found independently, sorted by appeal type or fallacy.

This week is a synthesis project rather than a new lesson: pulling together everything this unit has covered, ethos, pathos, logos, evidence relevance, fallacies, op-ed structure, and media evaluation, into one organized personal collection. A scrapbook forces a different kind of thinking than answering isolated questions does, because it requires deciding how to categorize and connect examples yourself, rather than being told which category each one belongs to.

A strong rhetoric scrapbook has two parts: examples pulled from this unit's texts (the Declaration, Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, the Gettysburg Address, the sample op-ed), each labeled with its rhetorical appeal or technique, and at least one brand-new example found independently, from an advertisement, a real op-ed, a speech, or even a conversation, analyzed with the same care.

📋 For the teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Let your student choose the scrapbook's physical or digital format (a poster, a slideshow, a simple document) -- ownership of the format increases investment in the content.
  • Push for real diversity of source in the independently found example: an advertisement, a social media post, and a political speech each reveal slightly different rhetorical habits worth noticing.
  • Resist doing the "new example" search for your student -- finding and correctly analyzing a fresh example unprompted is the actual skill this week is testing.
  • When the scrapbook is finished, have your student present just two entries aloud, explaining the technique each one uses, as light practice for next week's checkpoint.
Talk about it:
  • What was harder: analyzing the historical examples from class, or finding and analyzing a new one on your own? Why?
  • Did organizing your scrapbook change how you saw connections between different examples?
  • Now that you have studied all of this unit's techniques, has it changed how you personally react to advertisements or persuasive speech in daily life?

Mastery looks like: They can independently locate and accurately analyze a new rhetorical example, using the same vocabulary and standards applied to this unit's studied texts.

Common stumbles: Only re-labeling examples already explained in class without finding or successfully analyzing anything new; building a scrapbook with no clear organizing principle.

See it visually

Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.

Persuasive AppealsBuild an argument with ethos, pathos, and logos.try →
Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
Records attendance + 15 min of Reading for this learner.
← Back to todayAll coursesYear planner