MLK and Obama's March on Washington Speeches - Rhetorical Analysis w/Annotations

This resource includes the annotated texts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream Speech" given at the March on Washington and President Obama's speech given at the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington given in 2013. The included zipped folder also includes an unmarked copy of the speeches without annotations and marginal notes so that you can reproduce them for students so that they can annotate them. Reading and annotating informational texts is a critical component of the Common Core State Standards, and analyzing informational texts is a key skill that students will need for college and the jobs of the future. Using the comment feature in Microsoft Word, these resources includes critical commentary and analysis of the figurative and connotative meanings, rhetorical devices (logos, ethos, pathos), parallelism, repetition, allusions, themes aligned with the RI2, RI3, RI4, RI5, and RI6 standards from the Common Core State Standards. In addition to the identified figurative language, rhetorical devices, etc., the documents include standard alignment for each comment and marginal notes that explain the significance of each identified element. These resources will help teachers to guide students’ close reading of the text and help them to become more critical readers of informational texts. The provided commentary includes Common Core standard references so that you will be able to help students to see how the guided statements and commentary align with specific reading informational standards.


MLK and Obama's March on Washington Speeches - Annotated Texts w/Marginal Notes by Dr. Joel Boyce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.