Teaching Argumentative Writing - Social Change
Teach students to argue for meaningful change
The following unit plan is appropriate for grades 10-12 and can be adjusted to fit the ages and abilities of students in the classroom. The goal is to teach argumentative writing that goes beyond just arguing whether something is good or bad, right or wrong.
Much of this plan is designed to be a writing workshop, with students completing specific tasks each day as they progress towards a final product. Note: Most of the work completed in the early stages should be graded for completion. Encourage the students to take risks and get things “wrong” as they go. The ultimate goal is a quality product at the end.
Note: This is a work in progress, but I want the resources to be available as I add to them. Therefore, if you are getting this with initial publication, it will be pretty bare bones to start.
If you feel so inclined, you can support my efforts here by following me at Teachers Pay Teachers or offering to donate through my Ko-Fi account.
Pre-research work
One of my first activities is a Problem Solving Activity, based on the work of the national Future Problem Solving Club. You can find a copy of that activity here.
I also have students complete a project proposal. This detailed project proposal requires initial research to prove that their planned topic fits the parameters of the overall assignment and also forces initial deep thinking about the problem they want to solve, why they want to solve it, and how do different people think about it. The assignment can be found here.
I also have students consider the argument spectrum for their selected topic, encouraging them beyond black and white thinking and challenging them to see the nuance in the issue they want to research. I use this Google Slides presentation as part of class discussion. I break the class into three groups and have them place these slides in order on the spectrum before I give them the debatable answers. Finally, I have them complete their own spectrum for their research using this Google Slides presentation. Note: I did use ChatGPT to come up with the different items to put on the spectrum. I had my students use SchoolAI (my school has an account) to discover the different perspectives that fit their own selected issues. This helps them see the many different perspectives before I send them to our school databases to do research.
While I want my students to avoid using generative AI for their writing work, I have discovered it can be helpful for students who struggle to decide on a topic. I have them use this specific prompt with our school subscription to SchoolAI to help them brainstorm possible topics they might be interested in.
Research
I start with a research proposal. This is the slide show I use to break down each part of the assigned proposal.
I do this assignment with my Dual Credit Composition students, which means the research goes up a few notches. Because my students have already written an annotated bibliography by the time I teach this paper, I instead have them write a Literature Review. The assignment can be found here.
Writing the paper
My students use a full process of research notes, outline, rough draft, and final draft to produce their full final paper. The overall assignment can be found here.
Note: I will add the pieces to this writing process over the next few months as I make necessary revisions to post here.
After the paper is turned in
Because research papers of any kind take so long to grade, I try to have some kind of learning activity for students to do after they have finished the paper. One of those activities is an infographic assignment that helps them summarize the most significant points in their paper. That assignment can be found here.
I have also had them complete a satire unit before the end of the semester. I will be adding that unit as revisions are made.
Now your turn
What have you done with your classes? Share with fellow teachers below.