teaching argument writing
Kit Kats vs Snickers to teach argument/opinion writing
Posted on January 22, 2015Here’s an idea for motivating students to research and then design an argument–use candy bars. I did this with a group of sixth grade students. There were two teams of four students and each team was charged with studying different sources — the nutrition label, advertisements on YouTube, etc. to come up with logical reasons …Read more
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“Apples to Apples” to teach argument/opinion writing
Posted on January 14, 2015A few weeks ago, I used the game Apples to Apples with a group of sixth graders to have fun thinking about the concept of “reasons” and “evidence” as it relates to argument writing. They had a blast and I learned a lot about what they were struggling with conceptually and was able to coach …Read more
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CCSS Argument versus Opinion Writing, Part 1
Posted on December 1, 2013“What is the difference between the Common Core argument and opinion writing?” I’m addressing this with a group of middle school teachers tomorrow and it seems to be a question frequently asked in the field right now. I’ve been studying the difference for my own professional growth and thought I’d share some of my thinking. …Read more
Recently I taught a lesson with sixth grade students reading two texts on the topic of Hurricane Katrina. While the authors of both texts had the same purpose–recounting events that occurred when the storm hit land, the authors used different text structures to convey the content. The first text was primarily a timeline of what …Read more