Civics Day 8: Speeches and guns

Today we began class by starting our Major project on speeches. For our assignment, we first looked through rhetorical techniques, listing ethos, which is basically stating your credibility, Logos, which is when you use logic and facts in a speech, and Pathos, which is when you persuade your audience to feel a certain way through your speech. With this, we began our journey to what 3 speeches, after a brief preview of what we were going to do, we were tasked with watching 3 speeches, then choosing 1 to analyze, and 2 to reflect on. For our analysis, we went through 6 categories and needed 1 quote for each. One notable thing on this assignment was identifying where Ethos, Logos, and Pathos were used. I personally chose Obama's Keynote speech for my analysis which was based on the connection of all in the US and the need for unity and equality. For my two reflections, I did JFK's moon landing speech and Greta Thunbergs 2019 UN speech, both complete opposites of each other in terms of tone. I found this fun, although I probably wrote too much.

Everyone completing their speech analysis and reflections

In the Afternoon, we finished up our first speech assignment, and then we moved on to researching Moms Demand Action, a group against guns and gun violence, started in 2012. We did this in preparation for our visitor tomorrow, Bindu Jose, our only visitor tomorrow as our other visitor, Palwasha Sherwani, had to attend to important matters.

Researching Moms demand action

I personally had a great time doing my speech, although it was a bit time-consuming, seeing speeches from different people like Barbara Johnson and Barack Obama, and seeing the differences and similarities that made these Great speeches were interesting to see. When learning about the, I liked the switch in tones, and the tactics used in order to create more emotion and emphasis on the points given, which although I don't believe I can replicate nearly as well with the time I've been given, I believe I can still make a decent speech. Overall, today was definitely different from the other days, but still a unique learning experience.

Daily agenda, try to read it if you can!

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