Institute for Learning
The Abolition of Slavery (Grades 11-12)
The Abolition of Slavery (Grades 11-12)
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- Three informational texts
- 4-6 weeks instruction
- Explanation writing
What is this unit about?
As you might have guessed from the title, this unit is about analyzing arguments. Through engaging in the unit, students learn to analyze an author’s purpose as well as develop skills in discussing how rhetorical features enrich a text and help make an author’s purpose apparent. Students also learn how to write essays about their analyses of authors’ purposes.
This unit also features texts about the issues surrounding the abolition of slavery in the United States. Through the course of this unit, students deepen their understanding of these issues and learn to analyze how authors from the mid- to late-nineteenth century represented these issues in their texts. Students will use these three texts to examine multiple perspectives on the issues surrounding the abolition of slavery in the United States.
In this unit, students will read, write about, and discuss three texts to deepen their understanding of the following big questions:
- What are the issues surrounding the abolition of slavery for these authors?
- What are these authors’ purposes?
- How does each author’s methods and rhetoric contribute to the text?
For their final assessments, students will examine all three authors’ works to determine their perspectives on the issues surrounding the abolition of slavery and how they use various rhetorical features to make their purposes apparent.
What content will students learn?
Students will expand their knowledge base about:
- some of the issues surrounding the abolition of slavery in the United States.
- how to determine an author’s purpose.
- how rhetorical features such as diction develop the tone of a text.
- how authors use rhetorical features such as structure, tone, diction, and syntax to make their purposes apparent.

