Three weeks into AP Language and your students still can’t explain why a speaker chose a specific word. They know ethos is something, but they can’t tell you what it actually does. They read JFK’s Inaugural Address and see pretty language. You see rhetorical strategy. They see… words.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: you can’t teach them to analyze arguments or appeals until they understand the basic framework. I spent years trying to skip this. I’d jump straight into rhetorical analysis and wonder why my students were stuck.
Then I started with the Five Canons—invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery. And OPAME. The shift was immediate. Suddenly students had a language for what they were seeing. When they read a political ad, they could point to specific choices and explain why those choices mattered. They still weren’t great, but they were analyzing instead of guessing.
The unit I put together has everything you need to build that foundation: a 65-slide presentation that uses texts students actually care about (Kennedy, political ads, commercials), flexible pacing guides (6 days if you’re tight on time, 12 if you want to dig deeper), hinge questions to check if they’re keeping up, a writing template that moves them from guided work to independence, and a real assessment with rubrics for the responses you’ll see over and over. There’s a full breakdown of the Kennedy address so they know what the end result should look like.
For $39, you get the whole unit ready to teach. It’s the one thing your AP students absolutely need before you move into appeals and synthesis. Grab it here.
It’s not optional.
Starmaker English and Journalism Tools 
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