Pathos, Ethos & Logos: Mastering Rhetorical Analysis to Create Advertisements

Almost everywhere we look, there are everyday people, businesses, and politicians who are attempting to manipulate others with various arguments and advertisements. The only way to truly defend oneself from these persuasive attempts is to understand the use of emotional, character, and logical appeals (AKA Pathos, Ethos and Logos) at a deep level.

In this unit, your students will study the art of using emotional, character, and logical appeals to persuade others, culminating in a final cumulative project. Each lesson is an enjoyable, instructive stand-alone lesson in itself, but together they complete a thorough four-lesson unit in which your students create their own advertisements and sales pitches.

This unit is designed as a turn-key resource for teachers of all levels of experience, and makes it extremely easy to teach over a week of valuable lessons relevant to their lives. Your students will learn not only how to defend their hearts and minds from advertisements and politicians, they will hopefully learn the art of persuading others. As "the man with no name" says in A Fistful of Dollars: "The heart, Ramone. Don't forget the heart. Aim for the heart, or you'll never stop me.”

For those who use the CCSS, each lesson has been carefully CCSS aligned (as reflected throughout the unit).

Common Core with Uncommon Literature is happy to share these lessons with you, and ask that if you enjoy them to please rate them here, and tell others what you think. We appreciate your support, and would love to hear your feedback. You can find us on Twitter at @TheMrGodsey, and on the web at www.mrgodsey.com.


Standards-Based Serial by Michael Godsey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.