Week 5: Writing a Rhetorical Précis in ELD 2

Over the past couple of weeks, my ELD 2 class (comprised of 9 students from Mexico and Guatemala who have been in the country less than 2 years) was reading and working with the last text in Unit 1 of their textbook. We use the Edge curriculum, and the units are arranged to build certain skills throughout the unit, preparing students to close-read a grade-level appropriate text at the end of the unit. To give you an idea on how long it takes my students to read the stories in the text... we have been in school for 3 months; I meet with my students for 112 minutes every day; they have only read 7 stories (none longer than 5 pages) since the beginning of the year, and I am completely okay with that. I have been working a lot with my students on getting them to read the texts on their own and understand what the texts are saying. We've worked on skills like making predictions, clarifying meaning, summarizing, and analyzing the text. I often read a story to them and then have them go back and read the story again in small groups of 3. Since this is my first year teaching ELD 2, I was surprised at first by how long everything takes, and I was constantly postponing activities to the next day. Now, however, I am much better at estimating how long it will take my students to do something. 

We began working with the story "Ambush", this unit's close-reading selection, during the 1st week of November. First, I had students make predictions about what the text would be about. Then I read it to them, stopping every so often for them to summarize what had just happened. We worked through this together, because I wanted to give them a strong foundation for what was coming next. 

After we finished the story, I gave them another copy of the story, complete with reading questions, which I printed from the Edge website. This time, I had students read the story in their groups, underlining and circling important ideas in the text and answering the reading questions as they went. I will be honest and admit that I did not love all of the questions included on the printed copy, but what I did like was that many of the questions forced the students to go back into the text a third, fourth, or even fifth time in order to figure out the answer. 

When I first looked over the worksheet version of the story, I thought, "Well, I can have the students write a summary of the entire story after we read it," because I have been working A LOT on summarizing and getting the students to put their writing in their own words, instead of just copying lines straight out of the text. Since I also teach English 11 with both fluent English speakers and English Language Learners, I see most of the students who have come up through ELD 1, 2, 3, and 4, in my English 11 classes. I am always extremely frustrated when I have an ELL in English 11 who still is trying to get by with just copying lines straight from the text. I vowed to myself that, even if I accomplished nothing else, I would be happy at the end of this year as long as my ELD 2 students can write a summary in their own words.

In any case, as I thought about what I was having my students do, another idea struck me: they are getting pretty good at writing summaries; why not take it to another level and have them write a rhetorical précis? This year, the English department at my school has been focusing on précis writing with all of the English 9-12 classes, so I figured it would be a good idea to introduce my ELD 2 students to it now in order to prepare them for it next year in ELD 3/English 9. 

If you have ever taught a rhetorical précis to high schoolers, you know that it forces them to think more critically about the subject matter than a typical summary. You probably also know that it takes kids a little while to actually become proficient with writing a rhetorical précis. For these reasons, I decided I had to be very careful with how I presented the information and structure to my students. 

The first thing I did, after my students finished reading through the text and answering all of the questions in their reading packet, was break down the information one more time. I had students answer the following questions:

• Who is the author?
• What is the genre?
• What is the title?
• What is the date the text was published?
• What is the main idea?
• How did the author show us the main idea?
• Why did the author write the text?
• What is the tone of the text?
• Who did the author want to read the text?

You'll notice that my questions hit on all the components of the rhetorical précis: author, genre, title, main idea, purpose, tone, and audience. I did this before I even presented the rhetorical précis to my students. I wanted them to have it, so they would be able to use it when it came time to write the rhetorical précis. I also didn't want to confuse them too much by introducing the rhetorical précis first and then going back to find this information in the text. 

Next, I gave them the first of a series of worksheets, which I adapted from the worksheets provided by Lauren Jones, our Department Chair, that we used with the kids in English 9-12. The worksheet is a CLOZE note-taking guide, which walks students through what a rhetorical précis is. (Here is a version with the words filled in.) At the bottom of the worksheet, I included 2 samples that I wrote based on 2 stories we recently read in class. I chose to do this instead of including the samples Lauren provided us with or finding some random samples online because I thought that by writing about familiar stories, I would help my students see the structure and understand what a précis is. (Basically, I lowered the affective filter by using material they were comfortable with.)

After we worked through the first worksheet, I gave them a second worksheet that broke down the structure of each sentence; I also gave them each a box of colored pencils. (At this point, the kids were pretty tired, so they perked right up when I handed them those colored pencils.) I walked them through underlining the different requirements in different colors and locating those requirements in the sample sentence. For example, the first sentence looked something like this:

1. Sentence One:  Name of author, genre, and title of work, date in parentheses; a rhetorically active verb; and a THAT clause containing the major argument or thesis in the text.
1. Saki, in the short story, “The Open Window” (1914), suggests that we should not believe everything we hear.

Once we finished the 4 sentences, I had them work in their groups to underline the sentences in the précis at the bottom of the page, and I wandered around from group to group, helping them.

Now that they (somewhat) understood what a précis is and its structure, I gave them a third worksheet, which provided them with sentence frames to help them write their own précis. When I gave them the worksheet, I asked them to turn back in their notebooks to the page where they wrote down the information on the story, "Ambush". I then pointed out to them that the information they had already written was what they needed to use to fill in the different parts of the sentence frames. At this point, one of my students rolled his eyes and said, "Ay, Miss ... that's all? It's too easy!" I laughed to myself and wished I could have gotten his reaction on video to show to some of my students in English 11 who are still struggling. I told him, "Yep, that's all! It is easy!" And I was reminded of how my mother used to tell me, when I was only a few months old, "Daddy's at work right now. He's teaching Calculus. Calculus is easy," with the hope that I would grow up to believe that Calculus was easy. I am happy to share (and gloat) that when I did take Calculus, I got an A. There was something to my mother's madness that worked with me; a teacher herself, she worked on lowering my affective filter in regards to Calculus from very early on; she told me Calculus was easy, so when I took Calculus, it was easy. Now, for my ELD 2 students, writing a rhetorical précis would be easy, not only because I had told them it would be, but because I'd thoroughly prepared them for it.

What happened next? My students wrote! They filled in the sentence frames, with a little help and encouragement, and then transferred their writing onto a separate sheet of paper, where they wrote their 4 sentences as 1 cohesive paragraph. After they finished their final draft, I had them trade papers and work through underlining the different parts, because I wanted them to read each other's writing and see that they had, in fact, included everything they needed. 

Since I was out on Friday for professional development, I decided to let my ELD 2 students watch a movie (the first movie they've watched all year). I left Up with the substitute, along with copies of this worksheet. I figured I could get away with letting them watch a movie, as long as I had them write a précis on it afterwards. I'll see how it went when I meet with them on Monday.
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Ease of use: Was it easy to get my students to write a rhetorical précis? Yes, actually it was. However, that is only because they were completely prepared for it. If I had just given them the sentence frames and asked them to fill them in, they probably could have done it, but they wouldn't have understood what they were writing or why they were writing it. By breaking it down this way, I am convinced I could get just about anyone to write a rhetorical précis.
Would I use this again: Yes. I will actually re-use some of these worksheets when I have them write a précis later on. Also, next year, when I introduce the rhetorical précis to my English 11 classes, I will probably break it down more like I did for my ELD 2 students.
Downsides: As my students were working, I noticed that some of the sentence frames (particularly the one for sentence #3) were not the best. However, as a starting point, they worked. Also, I realized I am going to need to work with my ELD 2 students on determining the lesson or theme of a text, as opposed to the main idea of what happened in the text. 
Applications: Teaching students to write a rhetorical précis, or breaking down any new piece of material, for that matter.
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Did the process work? Yes! Are my ELD 2 students completely proficient at writing a rhetorical précis? No, definitely not. However, they have a very strong foundation on which to build their skills in the future.
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In other news, I learned last week that I will be presenting at the 2015 CATE conference! If you are an English teacher in California, I strongly encourage you to attend. Registration is open until December 1st.