Unit+6+Literary+Nonfiction

Overview:

 * The unit allows students to recognize the effective use of literary devices in nonfiction. Students are exposed to memoirs from various authors and look for common techniques throughout, including rhetorical strategies. Students also consider the ways in which the authors/orators engage readers/listeners to think carefully about literature, events, or ideas in a new way.

Focus Standards:

 * **RL.9-10.4:** Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of several word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
 * **RI.9-10.3**: Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them.
 * **RI.9-10.9:** Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington’s Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”), including how they address related themes and concepts.
 * **W.9-10.3:** Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
 * **SL.9-10.3:** Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
 * **L.9-10.1:** Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

Student Objectives:

 * Identify and explain the characteristics of a memoir
 * Distinguish between an autobiography and a memoir.
 * Identify and explain the effect of stylistic devices used in memoirs.
 * Identify and explain the characteristics of various types of essays (e.g., literary, narrative, etc.).
 * Identify and analyze the effect of rhetorical strategies in speeches such as alliteration, repetition, and extended metaphors.
 * Apply rhetorical strategies learned in this lesson to essay writing projects of their own.

Suggested Texts:
Essays: Memoirs: Speeches:
 * Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain) (excerpts)
 * "Superman and Me" (Sherman Alexie)
 * “Politics and the English Language” (George Orwell)
 * "Advice to Youth" (Mark Twain)
 * //One Writer’s Beginnings// (Eudora Welty)
 * //The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts// (Maxine Hong Kingston)
 * "Learning to Read and Write" (Frederick Douglass)
 * “Brandenburg Gate Address” (June 12, 1987) (Ronald Reagan)
 * “Gettysburg Address” (Abraham Lincoln)
 * "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 * “Address at the March on Washington” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
 * Text of speech with audio
 * "Letter to Albert G. Hodges" (Abraham Lincoln)
 * Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949 (William Faulkner) (EA)
 * “Second Inaugural Address” (Abraham Lincoln)
 * “Sinews of Peace Address” (Winston Churchill)