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Lesson plan Grade 10 English Language Arts

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in Tamsbrook's Wipes Campaign

A grade 10 ELA lesson in which students analyze the rhetorical appeals in three public messages a fictional utility wrote about wipes clogging its sewer pumps.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify the dominant rhetorical appeal in each of three short public messages.
  2. Students will cite the specific words or details that create ethos, logos, or pathos in a text.
  3. Students will write an explanatory paragraph comparing the persuasive strategies of two messages.

Vocabulary

Lift station
A lift station is a pumping setup that raises wastewater from a low spot so it can keep flowing toward the treatment plant. Sewers mostly flow downhill, so low areas need a lift.

Also: ethos, pathos, logos, rhetorical appeal

Teacher overview

Packages of cleaning wipes are often labeled flushable, yet those wipes do not break apart in water the way toilet paper does. They gather around pump impellers in sewer lift stations, where crews cut them loose by hand. This lesson gives students three short public messages, all written by a fictional utility about that problem, and asks them to analyze how each one builds its case. One misconception is worth naming aloud before students begin: many readers assume an appeal to emotion is a trick while an appeal to numbers is automatically honest. A writer can misuse a statistic, and a writer can use feeling responsibly, so the handout asks students to test both assumptions against the texts rather than accept either one.

Procedure

Framing the task (5 min): Tell students that a utility with an unpopular request has to choose how to ask. Distribute the handout and have students read the three messages once without annotating.

Direct instruction (10 min): Define ethos, pathos, and logos on the board with one plain example of each drawn from ordinary school life rather than from the handout. Stress that the three appeals overlap constantly and that naming the dominant appeal in a passage matters more than sorting every sentence into one bin.

Modeled analysis (10 min): Work through Message A aloud. Highlight the sentences carrying figures in one color and the sentences carrying obligation in another. Name the dominant appeal, then model the harder move: state one thing the figures in Message A do not tell the reader. This models the evaluative reasoning items 2 and 6 will require.

Guided analysis in pairs (10 min): Pairs annotate Message B and answer items 3 and 4 together. Circulate and listen for students who can quote a detail rather than restate the gist.

Formative check (5 min): Ask every student to write the dominant appeal of Message B on a slip of paper and hold it up. If more than a quarter of the class names logos, stop and re-model the difference between a specific detail and a statistic before students continue.

Independent analysis and writing (10 min): Students annotate Message C, answer items 5 and 6, and draft the paragraph in item 7. Collect item 7 as the graded product.

Closure (5 min): Take two or three volunteers who chose different messages for item 7. Ask each to name the audience their choice assumes.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in Tamsbrook's Wipes Campaign — Grade 10 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The three messages below come from a fictional campaign run by the town of Tamsbrook. Read all three, annotate them, then answer the questions.

Message A, printed on the back of a sewer bill:

Please keep wipes out of your toilet, including wipes labeled flushable. Last year our crews made forty-one unscheduled trips to the Verrow Street lift station to cut material off the pump impellers. Each trip took two operators about three hours. The overtime for that work, $27,400, is collected from every household in the sewer rate, whether or not that household flushes wipes. Wipes belong in a trash can, and the cost of putting them there is nothing.

Message B, a letter to the town newsletter from a collection system operator:

I have worked on Tamsbrook's sewer crew for twenty-two years, and I have cleared the Verrow Street pumps more times than I can count. The material comes out as a single wet knot, arm-thick, held together by the fibers in the wipes. In February we pulled that knot at two in the morning in sleet, and eleven days later we pulled it again. I am not asking anyone to feel sorry for the crew. I am asking you to picture the pump under your street the next time you reach for a wipe, because what you flush arrives on somebody's shift.

Message C, a notice posted at the town recycling center:

The Tamsbrook Public Works Department maintains the pumps that move wastewater out of every neighborhood in town. Our operators are licensed by the state and inspect these stations weekly. We are asking residents to help us protect equipment that all of us pay for and depend on. Wipes, paper towels, and dental floss cause the clogs we see most often. Placing them in household trash keeps the system running and keeps repair costs off your bill.

  1. Which appeal does Message A rely on most heavily? Quote the sentence that shows it best.
  2. Message A gives three figures. Identify one thing those figures do not tell a reader who wants to judge how serious the problem is.
  3. What makes the writer of Message B credible to a Tamsbrook reader? Cite the specific detail that establishes it.
  4. Message B never states a cost. Explain how the letter still argues that the problem is serious.
  5. Message C positions the department in a particular relationship to its readers. Quote the phrase that does this and name the appeal it creates.
  6. A resident argues that emotional appeals are always dishonest. Using evidence from Message B, explain whether that claim holds up.
  7. Write a paragraph of at least eight sentences explaining which message you would mail with a water bill, and why. Use evidence from two of the three messages and name the appeal each one relies on.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Logos. Accept the quotation of the trip count, the three-hour figure, or the overtime sentence, since each presents a countable claim as the reason to act.
  2. Answer: The figures do not say how the overtime compares to the rest of the sewer budget, whether forty-one trips is more than a normal year, or how much of the material came from wipes rather than grease. Accept any answer naming a missing comparison or baseline.
  3. Answer: The writer's twenty-two years on the crew, stated in the first sentence, establishes firsthand authority. Accept the repeated firsthand detail about clearing the same pumps as supporting evidence of ethos.
  4. Answer: It substitutes sensory detail and repetition for cost. The arm-thick knot, the sleet, the hour, and the return eleven days later all show a recurring problem, and the closing line places the consequence on a real person's shift.
  5. Answer: Any of the phrases positioning the department as a partner or shared owner, such as the request to help protect equipment that all of us pay for and depend on. The appeal is ethos, built on licensed operators and weekly inspections, with a secondary appeal to shared responsibility.
  6. Answer: The claim does not hold. Message B's emotional detail is factual and firsthand, it makes no assertion the writer could not have witnessed, and it explicitly declines to ask for sympathy. Accept a well-supported opposing answer if it cites text showing where the letter's feeling outruns its evidence.
  7. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient paragraph names one message, states the audience a bill reaches, cites specific evidence from two messages, names the appeal each uses, and explains why one fits the mailed context better than the other.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a two-column annotation frame with the appeal names already printed and space for one quotation each. Assign items 1, 3, and 5 only, then allow item 7 as a five-sentence paragraph comparing two messages the teacher has selected.

Extension

Ask students to draft a fourth message for a specific audience the campaign missed, such as landlords who furnish apartments or the managers of a laundromat, and to annotate their own draft with the appeals they chose and why that audience calls for them.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "flush," "lift station," "impeller," "overtime," and "knot" with a labeled diagram of a pump station and a photograph of ordinary household items sorted into toilet and trash. Provide sentence frames for items 1, 3, and 5, such as "Message ___ relies most on ___ because the writer ___." Allow oral answers for items 2, 4, and 6.

Extensions

Have students compare the three messages with the packaging language on a real wipes container, focusing on how the word "flushable" is defined there and what the label does not promise. Students then write a short letter to the manufacturer asking for one specific change in wording, supported by evidence from the campaign texts.