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    One day Elijah and Eric came home from school in need of a snack. They opened 

the refrigerator, and to their dismay, there was only one cupcake.

    “I deserve it! Give it to me!” yelled Eric.

    “I deserve it more! Give it to me!” shouted Elijah.

    The noise startled their Aunt Scooter out of her studying. She entered the 

kitchen and stared at them both.

    “What's going on in here? Why is there so much noise?” she asked.

    “There's only one cupcake and I deserve it.” explained Eric.

    “Not more than I do!” replied Elijah.

    “Why don't you both give me a speech as to why you deserve the cupcake more 

than the other?” suggested Aunt Scooter.

    Elijah began excitedly to explain the great day he had at school. First, the girl 

he had a crush on since the first grade finally spoke to him, he was picked first 

in kickball in gym, and to top it all off, he got an A on history test. Elijah 

believed he deserved the cupcake as a pat-on-the-back snack.

     Eric grumpily explained that his day was quite the opposite. First, he forgot 

his lunch, and he had packed his favorite—peanut butter and banana. Then, 

there was a pop quiz in Math. To top it all off, he got 3 days of detention for 

something that “wasn't his fault. Eric believed that he deserved the cupcake to 

soothe his bad day grumpies.

    Finding this a opportune time for a mini lesson, Aunt Scooter said, “Whether or not you 

know it, you guys just gave me an example of rhetoric.”

    “What's that?” Eric asked.

    “It's a way to persuade,” she explained.

“Long ago in Ancient Greece, dictators ruled the island of Sicily. Once they were kicked 

out, the courts had to figure out who owned the land—the people who owned it before 

the dictators took power or the people who owned it while they were in power. Since 

people couldn't hire lawyers to speak for them, they had to speak for themselves. This 

is where a man named Corax comes in. He knew that not everyone knew how to give 

a good speech, so he wrote a paper, called a treatise, on how. According to him, 

speeches consist of three key parts—the introduction, the proof, and the conclusion.”

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