Explanation

The creation of the rhetoric workshop in my class was the culmination of my experiences with studying rhetoric and composition, visiting a readers workshop at an elementary school, and attending a presentation Kelly Gallagher in which he demonstrated how to flow from a readers workshop to a writers workshop.

In the rhetoric workshop, the idea is to analyze the rhetorical situations and strategies employed in a given text (written, visual, digital, audio, etc...) and then have students practice the methods of the author in their own imitation of his/her text. My purpose in doing this is two-fold: (1) to give students a framework for how to consistently approach texts to ascertain their meanings and methods, and (2) to teach them writing skills not by rote memorization of a formula but by playing around with different professional modes and techniques.

The rhetoric workshop comprises the majority of class time in a week, and much support is given to help students succeed in it. For example, at the beginning of the school year, significant time is spent exploring what rhetoric is and the many terms associated with its situations and strategies. Additionally, throughout the year in each week's workshop, I serve as an intermediary between the students and the text - asking questions as necessary to help them analyze the text and modeling my own version of an imitation of the text before asking them to do so.

I hope that these methods and tools ultimately help students become better readers and writers.