Green Justice: Exploring how rhetoric and art are used to inform and empower communities

This unit was created by Deidra Wright, a high school English Language Arts educator in Atlanta, GA, as part of the 2023-2024 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. It is designed for facilitation across fifteen class periods, with work outside of class.

For more units created by Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellows in this cohort, click here.

Objectives:

Students will be able to: 

1. Analyze authors’ use of language and rhetorical devices.

2. Write an explanatory essay with a clear thesis, relevant supporting evidence, and pertinent examples to support your explanation regarding how the author builds a persuasive argument.

3. Use the writing process to plan, draft, and revise an essay.

4. Analyze details and fallacies in an argument.

5. Explain how an author builds an argument.

6. Synthesize information to develop a project about an environmental issue using various mediums. 
   Outcomes:

1. Analyze informational texts, shared testimonies, music , poetry and stories of people  living in the United States and outside of the U.S. who have experienced natural disasters and environmental injustice 
2. Apply their analyses to a work product aimed at informing their communities about environmental justice

Unit Overview:

The power of persuasion through rhetoric and art will be explored and analyzed in this unit as we examine various artifacts from articles, music, and art that are used to inform, entertain and persuade. Students will practice their analytical and writing skills throughout the unit by analyzing a series of journalistic and artistic resources related to environmental justice.  Students will then select and complete a project to display content mastery and advocate for an environmental issue they are passionate about.    

Overall Essential Questions: 

1. How can we create a  persuasive advocacy campaign to address and inform others in a creative way about  the issues we are learning about?
2. How can we creatively use our voices to make meaningful change? 

Scope and Sequence

1. Introduce underreported stories and discuss systemic issues
2. Allow students the opportunity to informally debate topics
3. Students will select a topic from the informal debate  and create a thesis statement 
4. Students will review the rubrics for the performance tasks
5. Students review additional underreported articles.
6. Teach students persuasive writing techniques
7. Review informational texts
8. Students write and report on an environmental justice topic using a medium they select.

Guiding Questions 

• Who is the most affected by natural disasters and why?
• What does an equitable response to natural disasters look like?
• What are the elements of a persuasive advocacy campaign?
• How do we utilize multiple resources, including personal testimony, to develop support for persuasive arguments? 

Themes explored: Injustices faced by marginalized groups, Human Rights: Freedom, justice, equity, environmental injustices, ubuntu

Performance Task(s):

Students will create a final project that educates their community about an environmental justice issue using details from articles explored in class. The final project should also reflect communication techniques analyzed throughout the unit and that students are determined to be the most effective in engaging and connecting with their communities.

The project will be student selected through a choice board of options for the students. The options are: 

1.Complete a Social Media Advocacy Campaign and Toolkit 

2. Podcast

3. Website

4. Write a Graphic Novel 

5. Complete and Argumentative Essay

6. Write a Letter to Influence Legislation 

7. Create a photography gallery

Assessment/Evaluation:

Pre-unit assessment will be given to test students’ knowledge on the standards that will be taught throughout the unit.  

Students will be given a weekly quiz on the standards taught. 

As students prepare to close each day, they will be asked to answer the essential question based on the knowledge and notes taken for the day. 

At the conclusion of the unit a post assessment will be given to make an assessment of student growth. 

• Rubric for photo blogs [.pdf][.docx]
• Rubric for TedTalk presentation (adapted from ReadWriteThink) [.pdf]
• Argumentative Essay rubric [.pdf][.docx]
• Comic Rubric [.pdf][.docx]

Seven-lesson unit plan for teachers, including pacing, texts and multimedia resources, guiding questions for group discussions, performance task instructions, and grading rubric for the unit. This unit was written to be taught over the course of 15 classes, but can shortened or extended as needed.

Unit Resources:

9th-10th Grade English Language Arts Georgia Standards of Excellence (ELA GSE)

ELAGSE9-10RI1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text

ELAGSE9-10RI2: Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

ELAGSE9-10RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used within the text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone ( how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).  

ELAGSE9-10RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose

ELAGSE9-10RL6: Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

ELAGSE9-10RI7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums(e.g., a person's life story in print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.

ELAGSE9-10W1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. a. Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence. b. Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level and concerns. c. Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims. d. Establish and maintain an appropriate style and objective tone
ELAGSE9-10W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. a. Apply grades 9–10 Reading standards to literature (e.g., “Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work [e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare]”). b. Apply grades 9–10 Reading standards to literary nonfiction

The students examples below reflect engagement by students in Ellenwood, GA who engaged with this unit in spring 2024.

1. Students started by analyzing what they know about environmental justice and questions they have about environmental justice:

2. Students used a graphic organizer to analyze several articles related to the impacts of natural disasters on different communities. The articles introduce students to the impact of climate change on weather patterns, and also ask students to consider environmental justice in the face of natural disasters. Students also began to explore how different mediums can be used to highlight underreported environmental issues.

The following is an example of an analysis by one student of an article about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The following is an example of analyses students did about the impact of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and an analysis of press coverage of Haiti over the last 10 years:

3. Next, students used a graphic organizer to analyze several resources about an environmental issue that interests them.

4. Students then explored environmental injustice and advocacy from several perspectives. They used local government databases to research the local leaders on environmental committees, analyze recent legislation in their state related to environmental justice, and practice writing letters to local officials to advocate for action to combat an environmental justice issue. They also researched environmental advocacy organizations in their community and what issues those organizations were surfacing.

5. As students prepared for their final projects, they used a graphic organizer to analyze instructional videos from Pulitzer Center journalists outlining how the journalists determined the medium they would use for their reporting:

6. In the end, students composed projects highlighting an environmental issue they explored in the lesson. The projects utilized details from their research to introduce the topic to their audience and explore solutions.

7. Several students also wrote reflections about their learning from the unit.