Common Activity One: An Overview of Teaching Argument Writing

Teaching argument writing is a process that plays out across a unit of instruction. It involves not just assigning writing, but engaging students in questioning and analysis, supporting their thinking and reading, and teaching writing explicitly. Teaching argument writing is not just something that happens at the end of a period; rather, it relies on an overall inquiry approach to teaching social studies combined with explicit instruction in literacy practices. Teaching argument writing requires sustained, systematic effort. The results are worth it.

This investigation will focus on 3 aspects of practice that support students’ growth as argument writers. Each aspect is accompanied with practical tools for putting these strategies into instructional practice.

Watch

Watch the Web seminar: Teaching Argument Writing in the Social Studies Classroom  (length: 1:08) presented by the author of this Investigation, Chauncey Monte-Sano, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Education.  

Videos included in the Web seminar:

Use the "After Viewing the Web Seminar" reflection questions in Handout #1 to guide your team's shared conversation and reflections.

Common Activity Two: Getting Familiar with the Common Core and C3 Framework

Read Take a closer look at the Common Core standards for argument writing. The writing standards for history/social studies, science, and other technical subjects in grades 6-12 are on pages 63-66 of the CCSS. The writing standards for grades K-5 are on pages 18-21. The K-5 writing standards refer to argument writing as opinion writing. Kindergartners are asked to express an opinion, but at all other grade levels students are asked to support their opinion or claim. In grades 1-3, students support opinions with reasons, in grades 4-5 students support opinions with facts and details, and in grades 6-12 students support claims with evidence and reasoning. We’ll focus here on grades 6-12 (pages 63-66).

 Read Let’s take a closer look at the “Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” benchmarks in Dimension 3 of the C3 Framework on pages 54-55. Then, look at the “Communicating Conclusions” benchmarks in Dimension 4 of the C3 Framework on pages 60-61. 

Reflect and Discuss:

Common Activity Three: Your Students’ Argument Writing in Light of the Common Core & C3

One important way of working on writing is reflecting on student work and using that work to develop learning goals. We started by looking at “Student A’s” paper from the Rosa Parks investigation on the Historical Thinking Matters website  (see slides 2-4 from the Web seminar PowerPoint). Now, collect your own students’ writing and analyze it.

Collect and Read

Take some time to gather some examples of your students’ writing (preferably their argument writing) and read through them. Compare your students’ writing to the CCSS standards and Dimensions 3 & 4 of the C3 Framework (pull these up in front of you as you look at student work). If you do not have student writing samples, look at a colleague’s or assign a brief writing task to your students. If that doesn’t work, take a look at the examples of argument writing in Appendix C of the Common Core (This is not ideal as most of these essays are not focused on social studies; however, it will give you practice in looking at student work and thinking about possible goals for students as well as how student writing might vary by grade level).

Reflect and Discuss:

Create:A RUBRIC OR A GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF WHAT STUDENTS SHOULD INCLUDE IN THEIR ARGUMENT WRITING

(1) Talk to Your Colleagues Who Teach Writing:

Before you go further, work with colleagues at your school to clarify your goals for students’ argument writing. Talk to colleagues in the English department or other teachers who focus on writing at your school and find out what expectations they have for students’ argument writing and how they communicate those expectations to students. 

Reflect and Discuss:

(2) Read: One way teachers convey expectations is through rubrics. Read examples of content-neutral argument writing rubrics at the Reading and Writing Project created by Lucy Calkins. Within the “resources” section, go to “reading and writing performance assessments.” Then find a sample argument writing rubric—for example, see the “8th grade performance assessment rubric” within the 8th grade Fall folder. 

Then, read the brief article by Chauncey Monte-Sano, “What makes a good history essay?” in the November/December 2012 edition of Social Education to gather ideas about argument writing that are content-specific.

Reflect and discuss: Use the "Create Activity: Read Examples" reflection questions in Handout #1 to guide your team's shared conversation and reflections.

Now, spend some time thinking about your learning and start to develop some plans for action based upon the opportunities and context in your site.  Use the following questions to help you plan next steps (these are also found in Handout #1):

What? What now are my priority learning goals for students’ argument writing? What now am I going to try to do in my classroom to support students’ argument writing?

So What? What have I learned that would help me work with other educators to (a) reflect upon students’ argument writing in social studies? (b) share and discuss strategies to support students’ argument writing in social studies?

Now What? What do I need to implement some of the teaching strategies to support students’ argument writing in my classroom? 

Consider the following support mechanisms needed from:

Summarizing Blog

At the conclusion of your study of this Investigation, post a summarizing blog of the main ideas from your group conversations.  You might choose to follow the What?/So what?/Now what? format directly above, or an alternate format option is to share:

When creating your blog post, tag the post with the topic tag "Argument Writing Reflections."