Literary Terms for Rhetoric-Help!

[SkippingRocks]

Hi

My co-op and I are new to the rhetoric level. We are doing year one and I am trying to do some advanced work to make our literary studies more cohesive for all teachers sharing this responsibility-teaching rhetoric literature. With that said, I am trying to come up with a list of terms that are the most important for them to know. I am using 1) Ryken's tests to look for terms, 2) SAP pages for which terms come up, and 3) Ryken's glossary in Words of Delight.

Here is my dilemma. By pouring over SAP pages for literature, I am coming up with terms that are NOT in Ryken's glossary in Words of Delight. Here are a few:
Elegy-Wk 7
Poetics-Wk 7
Type Scene-Wk 8
Point of View-Wk 8
Authorial Assertion-Wk 8
Normative Spokesperson-Wk 8
Selectivity-Wk 8
Arrangement-Wk 8
Devices of Disclosure-Wk 8

We took your advice from the Teacher Tapestry Training dvds, which states to start with the end goal you have in mind, and work your way back, to figure out how to get yourself there. Well, we want our kids to come away rich in literary terminology and understanding, so we went to the evaluations exams for the year and the SAPs as well in order to use that as a guide of what our kids need to know.

I have really only looked in detail at Unit 1, but I am quite unclear as to how we should select the most important terms. I do realize that Ryken's glossary contains many that we should know, but since there are others in the curriculum being singled out as "important", I'm not sure how to come up with a solid list for our own co-op. I realize that it would ideal for them to learn all, but we are trying to solidly shoot for a reasonable and attainable goal. Also, this group consists of freshman and sophomores only.

Thanks for whatever insight you can give as we plan for a successful year!

Amy

[Pat]

Amy if you look at the lit evaluations for the year, you'll find that most of those tests include a section where you give the your students X many lit terms, but you need to provide them.

What I did was high light any lit terms found in the weekly discussions is red (you could also make a list of them and indicate which discussion plan week and page they are found on). When I came to a test I used these which had been the topic of discussion to draw from in terms of what I tested.

I suppose I also used my own memory of what sorts of terms were used in the college lit classes I took. So, for instance, looking at the list you've drawn up, I would only "elegy" out as something I had seen used in a college lit course. The other terms the student should be able to use in our Socratic discussions, but I probably wouldn't have tested them unless the discussion really focused on them. Some of them are even used in other definitions: for instance "Normative spokesperson" is used in defining an epic. Others can be figured out simply from knowing what the two separate words mean: "authorial assertion" for instance.

As an example the first test I gave them following terms:

Genre

Elegy

Archetype

Irony

Pastoral

Point of view

Literary realism

Literary romance

Repetition

Epic

Artistry

Carpe Diem

I asked them to pick ten to define. I think "pastoral" might not be in Tapestry, but it came up for us because early on I asked them in a discussion what a pastoral poem was and my two brightest students were they only ones who thought they knew what it meant. They thought it would be a poem about a pastor. So that maybe a local knowledge word.