President Donald Trump's first State of the Union Address provides a rich opportunity to analyze presidential rhetoric in as formal a setting as it gets. Rather than analyzing Trump's off-the-cuff speeches or social media posts, the State of the Union Address gives us a carefully crafted presidential speech to delve into with our students. You'll find details about the contents of this particular lesson are below!
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The first part is a complete transcript of Trump's speech, formatted "side-by-side" with guiding questions to scaffold students' rhetorical analysis. Scaffolded questions span eight pages of the transcript — and on page nine, students are prompted to generate their own analytical discussion questions using the first eight pages as a model. The speech spans a total of 22 pages — which can be distributed to students in its entirety, or can be limited to the eight pages of scaffolded analysis.
The second part is a comparative prompt that asks students to analyze similarities and differences between President Trump's State of the Union Address, and the democratic response delivered by Joseph P. Kennedy III.