English Teacher Fun Box offers a curated collection of instructional materials and resources that are especially timely, relevant, and optimized to engage your students!
Here’s what you can find in the August Fun Box:
- Teach Argument With The Comprehensive “Introducing Argument” Lesson Series — If you’re looking for the best way to introduce argument, close reading, rhetorical devices, and synthesis to your students this school year, THIS IS IT! This comprehensive resource includes a four-pack of introductory lessons designed to ease students into some of the most complex and rigorous skills in ELA, in the fun and accessible manner that TeachArgument is known for. (Disney examples abound!!)
- Access each part of the “Introducing Argument” lesson series here:
- Teach Argument With Justin Bieber’s “Daisies” — Kick off the school year with close reading, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis using “Daisies” as a complex central text. (And you’re going to love the text that this lesson bridges to for synthesis, too!)
- Teach Argument With Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” — Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” has long been at the top of the charts, and we would be remiss if we didn’t include it in our repertoire of compelling, relevant, and rich arguments to unpack at the start of the new school year. Your students will exercise their close reading, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis skills with a song they already have stuck in their heads — and they’ll be generalizing their skills across any text you throw at them shortly thereafter!
- Teach Argument With Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” — Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” offers us a grand slam on a silver platter. Not only is “Anti-Hero” incredibly well-known amongst all of our students (regardless of how they feel about Swift), but the text provides a complex argument that’s ripe for analysis. We’ve served this resource up in the August Fun Box because it pairs perfectly with the popular summer reading text, “Popular Analysis,” although the book isn’t necessary for this lesson bundle to be a raving success.
- Teach Argument With Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” — Likewise, Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” provides us with a wildly popular anthem that’s wrapped around a complex rhetorical argument about autonomy, healing, emotional reclamation, and independence. Cyrus’s argument is an absolute delight to unpack with students, and this bundle offers a variety of ways to do so, whether you’re focusing on close reading, rhetoric, comparative analysis, or synthesis.
- Teach Argument With “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — One of the best way to increase rigor in any coursework… is to increase joy. And what better way to increase joy than with… you guessed it… Disney anthems. Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” might seem like a simplistic text at first glance, but as soon as your students realize that there are multiple speakers, each with their own competing motive… things get a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting. This is a lesson bundle you won’t want to miss!