My favorite teaching units are my research and rhetorical analysis unit. I love teaching rhetorical analysis and assigning students a rhetorical analysis PAPA square. Read on to learn more about the rhetorical analysis PAPA square activity and to sign up to receive your own free copy!

I love providing my students with the knowledge and resources they need to critically read and analyze text, know why it is powerful, and understand how the author crafted it. I feel that truly understanding the language and the text, primarily through rhetorical analysis, is something that makes all of my students critical thinkers.

Then I move on to more guided practice. As a class, we analyze a speech together. My students work individually, then in partners, and then in small groups to analyze and annotate the speech. Then we discuss it together as a class. This activity gives students an opportunity to examine the text individually, and then learn from their peers. When we finally go over the speech together as a class, students gain confidence in their rhetorical analysis skills because our classroom discussion affirms their analysis. I do this a couple of times with my students before sending them out on their own to rhetorically analyze a text.

Assigning the Rhetorical Analysis Papa Square

One project that I love assigning as part of my rhetorical analysis unit is the Artistic PAPA Square analysis project. For this assignment, students select a source and analyze it using the PAPA method. (I complete this as part of an argumentative research unit. Students choose one of their sources that they’ve read for their research paper to use for this project). They also identify examples of rhetorical appeals and strategies and explain their impact on the text or audience, and the students also write a rhetorical precis on the piece. You can visit this link to learn more about the rhetorical precis.

The PAPA method is similar to SOAPStone. Students analyze the purpose, argument, persona, and audience of the text. The purpose is the author’s purpose. Why did the author write this piece? The argument is the central argument of the article. What is the author arguing or trying to prove? The persona is the author’s persona. How does the author develop his or her persona in the piece? Why is this author a credible and authoritative subject to deliver and write such an article? The audience is who the text is intended for. Who was the author trying to reach with this piece?

For this assignment, I provide my students with colorful 12×12 inch card stock. I encourage them to add artistic elements that represent their topic. For example, they should select colors, symbols, and even fonts that are symbolic of their subject. I then provide my students with several days in class to carefully analyze their source and work on their Artistic PAPA Squares. For example, one class period I have them focus on the PAPA analysis. During another class period, I ask them to focus on rhetorical appeals and strategies. On another day I will have my students work on writing their precis. Finally, I usually give them one class period to work on assembling the project. I bring in colorful paper, glue, rulers, and other supplies. This is a pretty fun day in class.

Once the projects are turned in, I grade them using a rubric and then post them up in the classroom. These projects add color to any classroom wall, and students, as well as administrators, love seeing student work displayed in the classroom.

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I hope you and your students enjoy this rhetorical analysis project. As always, I would love to see pictures of your students’ work. You can share photos with me on Instagram (@thedaringenglishteacher) and Twitter (@daringenglish).

I recently started teaching rhetorical analysis to my sophomores. This unit precedes our research paper, and so one of the goals of my rhetorical analysis unit is to help students become critical readers. I want my students to be able to read a complex text and know a few things within their first read: I want them to know if it is a credible source, I want them to know the author’s purpose, and I want them to begin thinking about why the text is effective.

When I teach rhetorical analysis, I also teach the rhetorical précis. This four-sentence writing task is quite difficult for students, especially when they are so used to summarizing a text and its main points rather than how an author crafts his or her argument.

Since this writing task is so complicated, I scaffold my instruction so that students gradually ease into writing their own précis. The first part of the scaffold is writing a class précis. It is a fun and engaging activity that takes about two 60-minute class periods. To prepare for the activity, I dedicate one piece of chart paper for each class, and I label each sentence on the paper using sticky notes. After we finish writing a class précis, I display the class précis on the wall for students to reference later.

After reviewing the précis (I’ve found that this is the best online resource for writing a précis), we begin. I first have my students work in groups to write one sentence at a time on a collaborative Google Doc that everyone can edit. I take the best parts of each team’s sentence to formulate the winning sentence. To begin this process, we first write a class précis. I already seat my students in groups of six students at their tables, and so they work together in their teams to draft a team sentence. As my students are working on a collaborative document, I visit each table and explain what they are doing well, and I also explain how the team can improve its sentence.

Once we have a winning sentence, a student volunteer writes the sentence on the chart paper. We go through this process for each sentence -focusing on one sentence at a time until the class has written one précis. At the end of the activity, I read the précis aloud to the class. My students are usually pretty impressed with their writing, and I am, too!

Here is a sample of the Google Doc I use in my classroom. Since this is a Google Doc, you can edit it after you make your copy.

I hope that you and your students love this activity. It’s a fun, hands-on, engaging lesson that authentically helps students learn how to write a rhetorical précis.

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