After viewing, listening to, and studying commencement speeches by notable figures, students will write and present their own graduation speeches. The entire class will first listen to at least two commencement speeches to extrapolate their thematic, structural, and stylistic features and will discuss how these elements function in their rhetorical situations.
Before composing their own speeches, students will work independently to locate and analyze a commencement speech, doing the research necessary to understand the interrelationship of message, speaker, audience, and occasion.
Students will continue to work independently to identify thematic and stylistic patterns employed in the speech, and then consider how these and other resources of language might be used in their own speeches.
Each student will write and deliver a high school commencement address that contains qualities typical of graduation speeches.
Students will also be responsible for creating a writer’s statement that analyze their speech in terms of tone, message, and use of rhetorical devices, as well as reflects upon the creation and inspiration behind their speech.
