This unit was created by a team of educators in the Piper School District, as part of the 2021 cohort of The 1619 Project Education Network. It is designed for facilitation across approximately two weeks or five 90-minute sessions.
Objectives and Outcomes
Students will be able to…
- Use rhetorical analysis to examine a range of essays and creative works about slavery and American history
- Consider the implications of how historical events are portrayed
- Synthesize their thinking and draw conclusions in response to a central inquiry question in essay and discussion formats
- Students will increase perspective and understanding about the narratives of history and how they get constructed.
- Students will be able write critically, using their own thinking synthesized with high-level texts
- Students will be able to read and annotate high-level texts.
Essential Question
Who writes history and how does history get written?
Unit Overview
Students will analyze the rhetorical nature of how historical events are presented. Through analysis and discussion of a range of texts from The 1619 Project, they will answer the inquiry question: Who writes history? Students will analyze texts and examples to draw conclusions into a cohesive essay.
Performance Task
Students will explore the following inquiry question through composition and civil discourse: Who writes history and how does history get written?
Timed Essay:
Students will answer the inquiry question: Who writes history? They will use a rhetorical lens to explain their reasoning.
Socratic Seminar:
Students will engage in a Socratic Seminar to ask questions, express their thinking, and listen to their peers.
Two-week unit plan for teachers, including pacing, texts and multimedia resources, graphic organizers, and assessments for performance tasks for the unit. Download below, or scroll down to browse the unit resources.
Facilitation Resources
| Essays & Poetry | The 1619 Project: Students choose two creative works and two essays for annotation and deep analysis. The 1619 Project, a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown, Virginia with a series of essays, images, stories, and poems that challenge readers to reframe their understanding of U.S. history by considering 1619 as the start of this nation's story. |
| Pulitzer Center Resources | "Reading Guide for The 1619 Project Creative Works," Pulitzer Center Education "Reading Guide for The 1619 Project Essays," Pulitzer Center Education |
| Teaching Resources | AP English Language Scoring Rubrics, CollegeBoard Graffiti Boards Teaching Strategy, Facing History & Ourselves |
AP English Language and Composition Framework:
RHS.1: Explain how writers’ choices reflect the components of the rhetorical situation.
RHS.2: Make strategic choices in a text to address a rhetorical situation.
CLE.1: Identify and describe the claims and evidence of an argument.
CLE.2: Analyze and select evidence to develop and refine a claim.
REO 5A Describe the reasoning, organization, and development of an argument.
REO 1G Use organization and commentary to illuminate the line of reasoning in an argument.