Teaching Argument Writing
Creating our argument reading and writing unit was a labor of love and trial and error. The best books that we have found are Teaching Argument Writing by George Hillocks and Good Thinking by Erik Palmer. They both offer engaging lessons that really help break down the argument reading and writing process, especially for middle school students. We believe that this particular standard is developmentally inappropriate for middle school students, but yet here we are having to teach this college level writing concept.
To begin our month long unit of study, we love starting our week with lessons from Good Thinking. He offers great lessons on how to break down different syllogisms and on how to validate the accuracy of an argument. He also offers ideas on how to find key evidence during the research process.
After a week of good thinking, students are ready for the next level of argument analysis. We then spend a week using the engaging lessons from Teaching Argument Writing. We love using the murder mystery app that he suggests to help our students find key evidence and develop reasoning and warrants. We love using his school mascot debate to determine if a mascot is a good mascot or not. We love using his Giraffe awards case study to help students develop an argument based on set criteria. Lastly, we love using his courage awards to help students develop personal criteria to prove a position.
After this two week long priming of argument analysis, students are ready to start research topics. Instead of turning them loose on a data base, we prefer to give them text sets. We have created many text sets with research graphic organizers and three articles: background, pro, and con. Once students have completed the three articles and have picked the side with the strongest evidence, students are then allowed to research one more article that strengthens their position using library databases. We like using SRIS research database the best.
We sell our argument research text sets in our Teachers Pay Teachers store. We have seven engaging arguments topics for middle school students. We have also bundled them all together at a nice discount, too. In addition, we sell our argument writing presentation in our Teachers Pay Teachers store.
This gradual release of learning is the best way for our students to be and most importantly feel successful at writing argument essays.