Citation: Keller, Daniel. “Thinking Rhetorically.” Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey, 2007. 49-63. Print.
Reading and Thinking 
Chapter five brought closure to a lot of the confusion that I struggle with when it comes to thinking rhetorically. The first issue is the large vocabulary connected to composing with audio and video. Some of the terms are just "common sense", but I appreciate the author including some terms on Fig. 5.1. The process takes time and great planning in order to turn process into product. In my opinion, this is too much for a 6th grader to understand. Sections can be taught, but not fulfilled as it should within a year time with SOL testing being a major priority. Students need to learn how to do this early, because I find that by college they should be able to apply this when learning instruction.
I really enjoyed your comment. I am so glad there is someone else who teaches 6th grade in the class. I believe that you teach reading and I teach writing, so we get both sides of language arts. :) I wholeheartedly agree that this concept would be too advanced for a 6th grader, though some component would be acceptable to use. As you probably know, most of our 6th graders struggle with writing in general. We just published our narrative essays in the computer lab and that was quite a challenge. Many of the students only typed one or two paragraphs in a 90 period because they didn't know why there were red lines underlining their sentences or why they had to put a space after commas and periods. With that being said, with an SOL driven curriculum, it makes it hard to incorporate anything new, especially when you are having to really TEACH them how to do each element. Perhaps if we did not have the constraints of the SOLs weighing on our shoulders, we would be able to take the time to teach the students about the technology and how it could work for them in the reading and writing classrooms.
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