This 11th grade lesson plan focuses on close reading
strategies, annotating, and ultimately completing a rhetorical precis. Students
will read the article “The Right to Fail” by W. Zinsser and watch a youtube
video on famous celebrities who have experienced failure before success. Then,
they will annotate Zinsser’s article, complete a quick write, and locate claims
in order to produce their rhetorical precis. This lesson will help teachers at
my site to scaffold the close reading skills emphasized by the Common Core
curriculum in order to teach all students how to close read, find textual evidence,
and then incorporate the information into an academic summary analyzing the
author’s purpose.
