Holy guacamole ... in the words of our beloved students ... Eric Church's "Six Strings" commencement address is straight up lit.
Wow! I think this definitely makes my top-five of all time.
Plus, especially given how explicit it is, it's a perfect launching pad to introduce students to some of our more prominent rhetorical terms, devices, techniques.
In this writing workshop, I walk students and teachers through the entire process of drafting a full-length rhetorical analysis essay over Church’s address.
We kick things off with a discussion game called “What’s In Ned’s Head,” unpack the speech together, and then “paint” the essay step-by-step using teacher-written samples and exemplars.
Along the way, I explicitly model my heuristics for analytical writing — including the declarative thesis for introductions and the syllogistic method for body paragraphs — so students can actually SEE how strong line of reasoning gets constructed instead of just hearing abstract advice about “analysis.”
If your students struggle to move beyond summary and into meaningful commentary, this one might really help.
The video, slides, discussion materials, and teacher models are all linked in the description.
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