Greer 1

Speaking: Using Emotion and Emphasis

1.

Context: 9th, Honors, Suburban

2.
Broad, Lifelong Goal/s & Rationale: It is important for students to
learn how to incorporate emotion and use emphasis when they are speaking
because it is a vital part of getting people to listen to them and be interested
in what they have to say.
3.
Specific Daily Objective: Students will learn how to incorporate
emotion into their speaking and how to emphasize important points of their
speech. They will learn that this is important because it keeps their audience
engaged and makes their goal/argument easier to understand.
4.
Common Core or NCTE Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 Participate effectively in a range of
discussions with diverse partners, expressing their own [ideas] clearly and
persuasively.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.4 Present information, findings, and supporting
evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the
line of reasoningsubstance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience,
and task.
5.
Assessment and/or Outcomes: Students will demonstrate their
understanding of the importance of putting emotion and emphasis into their
speaking by:
Their participation in the guided practice: + or for the day.
Their ability to perform their introduction for me and underline
words/phrases: + or .
6.
Materials:
Excerpt from the transcript of Somewhere in America (see attached)
Somewhere in America video, 0:30-1:48,
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YshUDa10JYY)
ELMO
Excerpt from the transcript of Angelina Jolies Remarks on the
Humanitarian Situation in Syria (see attached)
12 copies of excerpt from the transcript of Clint Smiths The Danger of
Silence (see attached)
12 copies of excerpt from the transcript of Tillet Wrights Fifty Shades of
Gay (see attached)
7.

Methods:

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I will give announcements and book recommendations for Diamond

Boy by Michael Williams and Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar
Children (series) by Ransom Riggs to start class
(3 minutes).

I will tell the students to get out their independent books and to begin
reading. I will walk around and quietly check in with students to record
where they are with their books and see how they are progressing.
(10 minutes)
Minilesson Categories:
Anticipation:
I will read the excerpt from the transcript of Somewhere in America
(which is a poem about the lessons we dont teach our students in
school written by 3 high school students) aloud in a very monotonous
voice and not emphasizing any words.
After Im done reading, I will ask students to say one word that
describes how what I just read made them feel.
(4 minutes)
Overview:
I will tell students that using emotions (happy, sad, excited, angry,
disgusted, etc.) and emphasis
(special and significant stress of voice laid on particular words or
syllables.dictionary.com) is important to keep your audience
engaged and alert.
I will tell them that using emotion and emphasis will make it easier for
their audience to understand their goal and argument.
Then, I will play a part of the video of the girls performing
Somewhere in America (0:30-1:48).
After the video, I will ask students in what ways they noticed the girls
using emotion and emphasis to engage their audience and to make
their goal clear:
o One student might say that when the girls began raising their
voices, they knew that point of the poem was especially important.
(5 minutes)
Modeling:
I will put an excerpt from the transcript of Angelina Jolies Remarks on
the Humanitarian Situation in Syria (see attached).
I will tell that students that I will be skimming through the passage
while underlining words/phrases that I might want to emphasize and
highlighting words/phrases that show emotion.

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o I will tell students that their underlining and highlighting
words/phrases will most likely overlap
Then, after skimming through, I will decide what kind of emotion the
passage calls for to show my audience what my goal/argument is.
o I will tell the students this passage should be read with somber
and pleading emotion.
o For highlighting and underling, see attached.
(4 minutes)
Guided Practice:
I will tell students to get into groups of 2.
I will pass out excerpts from two different speeches, The Danger of
Silence and Fifty Shades of Gay, to each group so each partner has
one (see attached).
I will tell students that first, they will each be looking through their own
speech individually while highlighting emphasis words/phrases and
underlining emotion words/phrases.
I will tell the students that each partner will be reading their excerpt
with emotion and emphasis and the other partner should be able to
explain what they the goal/argument of the speech is.
I will walk around the classroom, listening to each group and answering
any questions.
After every one has finished, I will ask for volunteers to read each
excerpt out loud and tell us what the goal/argument is and how they
know/what they highlighted and underlined.
(8 minutes)
Application:
For homework, I will tell the students that they need to practice
speaking the introduction of their speeches at home for at least 10
minutes, making sure to use emotion and emphasis.
I will tell them that they must underline and highlight words/phrases
like we did in the modeling and guided practice.
They will be individually speaking the introduction for me at the
beginning of tomorrows class and showing me where they underlined.
(1 minute)

Then, I will tell students that we will be having a Socratic Seminar over
the video we watched in our anticipation, Somewhere in America
(the students have done a Socratic Seminar many times before, so
they know what it is).

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o I will ask students to write down anything words/phrases that
stick out to them, and I will play the video againthe whole thing
this time.
o After the video is played, I will instruct students to begin the
seminar.
o I will be keeping track of what the students said and who talks.
Students could mention not being able to talk about rape in
school and how it is a taboo subject that a lot of people
brush under the rug.
Students could mention the KKK website and question why
it hasnt been shut down.
o After students have talked for about 10 minutes, I will wrap up
the seminar and ask students to write a 2-minute reflection on
what they learned from the seminar. This will be their exit slip
for the day.
(15 minutes)
8.

9.

Adaptations:
I will print out extra excerpts of the one I will be reading for the
anticipation and modeling so that any student can have one that needs
to follow along with the words while Im reading it out loud.
I will put English captions on the video for the Overview.
If there are at least 5 students that didnt have time to talk in the
seminar, I will extend the Socratic Seminar to the next day, too.
Possible Problems & Solutions:
If the computer will not play the video, I will play it from my phone. The
students just wont be able to actually see the girls perform.
If no one has anything to say or there are lulls in the conversation
during the Socratic Seminar, I will have prompts to get the
conversation going.
o For example, I could ask students what lesson that we dont
teach in school stood out to them the most, or was there
anything that they did not agree with?

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Excerpt from Somewhere in America

0:30-1:48

Here in America, in every single state, they have a set of

standards for every subject
A collection of lessons that the teacher's required to teach by
the end of the term
But the greatest lessons you'll ever teach us will not come
from your syllabus
The greatest lessons you will ever teach us, you will not even
remember
You never told us what we weren't allowed to say
We just learned how to hold our tongues
Now somewhere in America, there is s a child holding a copy
of "Catcher in the Rye" and there is a child holding a gun
But only one of these things have been banned by their state
government
And it's not the one that can rip through flesh
It's the one that says "F*** you" on more pages than one
Because we must control what the people say, and how they
think
And if they want to become the overseer of their own selves,
then we'll show them a real one
And somewhere in America, there's a child sitting at his
mother's computer, reading the homepage of the KKK's
website, and that's open to the public
But that child will never have read "To Kill a Mockingbird"
because the school has banned it for it's use of the "N" word
Maya Angelou is prohibited because we're not allowed to talk
about rape in school
We were taught that 'just because something happens,
doesn't mean you are to talk about it'
They built us brand new shopping malls so that we'll forget
where we're really standing

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On the bones of the Hispanics, on the bones of the slaves, on

the bones of the Native Americans, on the bones of those
who fought just to speak!
Excerpt from Angelina Jolies Remarks at Open Briefing on
the Humanitarian Situation in Syria:
*Highlight/Underline
0:00Mr President, Foreign Ministers, Your Excellencies, Ladies
and Gentlemen: it is an honor to brief the Council.
I thank His Excellency the Foreign Minister of Jordan, the
High Commissioner for Refugees, and my colleagues from
OCHA, and the World Food Programme.
Since the Syria conflict began in 2011, I have made
eleven visits to Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon,
Turkey and Malta. I wish that some of the Syrians I have met
could be here today.
I think of the mother I met recently in a camp in Iraq.
She could tell you what it is like to try to live after your young
daughter was ripped from your family by armed men, and
taken as a sex slave.
I think of Hala, one of six orphaned children living in a
tent in Lebanon. She could tell you what it is like to share the
responsibility for feeding your family at the age of 11,
because your mother died in an air strike and your father is
missing.
I think of Dr Ayman, a Doctor from Aleppo, who watched
his wife and three year-old daughter drown in the
Mediterranean when a smugglers boat collapsed packed with
hundreds of people. He could tell you what it is like to try to
keep your loved ones safe in a warzone, only to lose them in
a desperate bid for safety after all other options have failed.
Any one of the Syrians I have met would speak more
eloquently about the conflict than I ever could.
Nearly four million Syrian refugees are victims of a
conflict they have no part in.

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Yet they are stigmatized, unwanted, and regarded as a

burden.
So I am here for them, because this is their United Nations.
Here, all countries and all people are equal from the
smallest and most broken member states to the free and
powerful.
The purpose of the UN is to prevent and end conflict:
To bring countries together, to find diplomatic solutions and
to save lives.
We are failing to do this in Syria.
Excerpt from Clint Smiths The Danger of Silence
0:00-1:27
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1968 speech where he reflects upon the
Civil Rights Movement, states, "In the end, we will remember not the
words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
As a teacher, I've internalized this message. Every day, all around us,
we see the consequences of silence manifest themselves in the form of
discrimination, violence, genocide and war. In the classroom, I
challenge my students to explore the silences in their own lives
through poetry. We work together to fill those spaces, to recognize
them, to name them, to understand that they don't have to be sources
of shame. In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where
students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have
four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my

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class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read
critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth.
And I find myself thinking a lot about that last point, tell your truth.
And I realized that if I was going to ask my students to speak up, I was
going to have to tell my truth and be honest with them about the times
where I failed to do so.

Excerpt from Tillet Wrights Fifty Shades of Gay

0:00-1:25
Human beings start putting each other into boxes the second that they
see each other -- Is that person dangerous? Are they attractive? Are
they a potential mate? Are they a potential networking opportunity?
We do this little interrogation when we meet people to make a mental
resume for them. What's your name? Where are you from? How old are
you? What do you do? Then we get more personal with it. Have you
ever had any diseases? Have you ever been divorced? Does your
breath smell bad while you're answering my interrogation right now?
What are you into? Who are you into? What gender do you like to sleep
with?

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I get it. We are neurologically hardwired to seek out people like

ourselves. We start forming cliques as soon as we're old enough to
know what acceptance feels like. We bond together based on anything
that we can -- music preference, race, gender, the block that we grew
up on. We seek out environments that reinforce our personal choices.
Sometimes, though, just the question "what do you do?" can feel like
somebody's opening a tiny little box and asking you to squeeze
yourself inside of it. Because the categories, I've found, are too
limiting. The boxes are too narrow. And this can get really dangerous.