Argumentation Bootcamp

By Velicia Pernell

This post details our experiences executing the first session of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project 8th Grade Argumentative Unit: Debating Positions to Develop a Complex Argument.

I LOVE teaching argument — not the bickering, yell-inducing version of argument but the kind that encourages students to be evaluative, reflective, and even suspicious in their everyday lives. After all, I want students to think so critically that when they’re sitting in front of their favorite social media network, they think: Just because someone posts it, doesn’t mean it’s true.

I have taught argument for years, but working with the Science department for our current disease PBL Unit raises the stakes — and complexity.  Thankfully, the first session of the TCRWP Argumentative Writing Unit was invaluable as Chloe and I began laying the groundwork for the writing component of the unit. Session one provided students with manageable rigor that introduced them to the basic training of argument.

Framing the Lesson 

The initial argumentative writing lesson is designed with the expectation that teachers have taught the 8th grade literary essay.  Because Chloe and I did not teach the literary essay beforehand, we introduced this unit by connecting to the work students did throughout our book club unit.

“In book clubs, you made verbal claims about themes in literary texts and supported your points with evidence from the text.  Today, you will argue a position about important issues raised in nonfiction.”  

Lesson Highlights

Crafting Implications

Scaffolding the first section of the lesson was a must. After being assigned claims, my kids collected evidence while listening to the New Yorker article, “Shoot-Out” by Guy Martin.  As I read the text aloud, they wrote examples that supported their claims.

After reading the first page of the article, some of my students were stuck; listening for evidence without a printed text to follow along with made them uncomfortable.  The biggest learning curve, however, was developing reasons and evidence from a non-persuasive text.

Following the attempts-at-analogies handbook, I framed drawing conclusions around recent tragic events in Paris surrounding the magazine, Charlie Hebdo by emphasizing that one passage could be used to support opposing viewpoints.  For example, in light of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, what one views as free speech, another may interpret as hate speech.

Next, I reread a portion of the text about a student whose commitment to a game with simulated violence could be perceived as both ingenious and reckless and left the logical reasoning up to my students. Their faces and moving writing utensils indicated that the explanation worked.  Later on, they annotated to collect evidence for more nuanced claims:

• Role playing games with simulated violence are perilous for kids.
• Role playing games with simulated violence are diverting for kids.

Annotating to develop reasons and evidence

College-Readiness

Differentiation. Individualization. Rigor.  These three — of the many — educational buzz words along with the Common Core shift to increase exposure to argumentation has led to various practices:

• leveled readings
  • The teacher uses sites like Newsela to provide texts with ranging Lexile reading levels.
• topic variation based on perceived difficulty
  • Students who are labeled as academically gifted are assigned topics about politics or other areas that require extensive background knowledge: ?.
  • Students with learning disabilities/difficulties are assigned topics about more common issues: should soda be banned in the school cafeteria?
• promoting formulaic, vapid writing
  • the dreadful, five-paragraph essay
  • topic sentences that begin with bland transitions: first, second, third

The TCWRP unit employs more useful strategies that aid students in becoming more discerning and academically prepared by promoting balanced literacy and the following methods:

• talk as prerequisite to writing
  • Students talk to gather and clarify claims/reasons.
• mentor texts
  • Students read and emulate good writing.
• formative feedback as differentiation
  • Students confer with teachers and self-assess using checklists, etc.
• nuanced claims
  • Students argue more sophisticated claims — not should or shouldn’t debate topics.

Overall, the TCRWP 8th grade argumentation unit has rattled students’ literary comfort zones and pushed them to new critical thinking heights.