Including counterclaims in argumentative writing may be new to some students. Luckily, our very own Mrs. Artero pointed out this example in the essay, "Scary Tales" by Jakie Torrence, featured in the 8th Grade ELA textbook. In "claim" in the essay is that "scary stories are good for children," and the author presents a pretty good argument that scary stories teach children to be cautious.
The paragraph beginning on line 44 of this essay presents a counterclaim, most likely stemming from something that the author has probably experienced in her life.
Notice that there are no transitional words or phrases such as "some people may say that...." or "others may argue that...." Instead, the author just states the counterclaim and then goes right into her rebuttal, again, without traditional transitional words.
A faithful reader of The Writing Korner recently sent in this email:
When the kids are quoting something in their writing, are they supposed to do it MLA style? If they take a quote from one of the articles on the PBPA, how should they cite this? Thanks, writing guru!
Dear Faithful Reader,
Consider the following example for using Direct and Indirect quotes:
Researchers also believe that we are born with a knack for mathematics. In the article, "Gut Math," Dr. Knowitall states, "even lowly invertebrates such as the common sea cucumber can estimate the number of polyps in a community and will consistently choose the largest nutritional source." Dr. Knowitall also explains how fish will seek out larger schools to swim with, and how primates can estimate the number of bananas in a bunch from some pretty far distances. Dr. Knowitall then compares her findings in the animal kingdom to similar research done on human beings, including small children and Alzheimer's patients.With respect to small children, the research proves that infants can estimate the amount of milk in a bottle and will always choose the greater quantity. All of this research can only lead to the conclusion that all humans are born with a knack for mathematics.
The above example shows that the writer has an understanding of the article and is able to relate that understanding back to the topic of the essay, which was basically, "we are all born with a knack for mathematics." Notice how the writer gives credit to the article and the researcher in the sentence, and does not have use parenthesis or MLA style.
I do encourage my students to put quotation marks around the titles of the articles as well. I guess this can be considered MLA style. I tell them to underline book titles in their classroom writing as well. I believe this simple convention will satisfy even the strictest of graders on the FSA Writing Test.
This is a cool article that shows some benefits of writing that are usually disregarded in public education.
The gist is: write more in class, have healthier, happier students. This reminds me of Freedom Writers when all the students were able to see improvements in their attitudes towards life when they began their journal writing in class.
Thanks Mr. Kodish for forwarding this link! The interview with Stephen King is interesting-he talks about the importance of teaching writing as well as the challenges. He offers his own advice from his experience as a high school teacher. I enjoyed his mention of sentence diagramming, the Oxford comma, and how to engage students. Click here for the interview.
Need ideas to incorporate writing and learning strategies in your science class? Feel free to download this booklet that connects various strategies to the Grade 6-8 Big Ideas. Click Here.
Here's another contribution from Mr. Gonella. The eighth grade Language Art teachers will be using this soon!
U.S. Immigration with Mixed Citizenship Families
In this lesson provided by the PBS documentary series, POV (Point of View), students will explore how United States immigration policy affects families with mixed citizenship status. They will first discuss the challenges faced by a mixed-status family when U.S. immigration authorities schedule undocumented parents to be deported. Students will also explain how the circumstances of such families could impact the United States politically, socially and economically. Finally, they will analyze public policies that address the needs of mixed-status families.
This lesson features a clip from the film Sin País (Without Country), a documentary that tells the emotional story of a family with members of mixed citizenship status who separate when the undocumented parents are deported from the United States and their teenage children stay behind to continue their education.
Related Benchmarks:: SS.7.C.2.1: Define the term "citizen," and identify legal means of becoming a United States citizen. SS.7.C.2.13: Examine multiple perspectives on public and current issues. LACC.68.RH.1.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions. LACC.68.RH.2.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies. LACC.68.RH.3.7: Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts. LACC.68.RH.3.8: Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text. LACC.68.WHST.3.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration. LACC.68.WHST.3.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Ms. Rachel Cohen was kind enough to submit this entry to The Writing Korner. Thanks Ms. Cohen!
Students’ lack of awareness of basic
grammar rules can seem like bad weather – everybody complains but nobody ever
does anything about it.If you
don’t expect correctness in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you send the
message that those elements don’t matter (or only matter in Language Arts
classes).It is important
that you make clear to your students that these elements are also important in
your field – and that they will be a part of the grade on any written
assignment.
As
teachers, we have a lot on our To Do list, and not enough time in the day.Adding grammar correction to your list
may seem overwhelming.There are
ways to correct grammar that will not take you hours.Here are some ideas on how to address the issue, without
taking up too much time:
·Focus
your comments on only one or two types of grammatical problems on each written
assignment.Obviously, you
will want to choose areas of concern for most of the students in the
class.If you concentrate on one
or two concepts a month, you might even have time to present quick in-class
lessons.
·Set
reasonable grammar goals for each student.Address your comments on how well that student meets his or
her goals.
·Mark all
of the grammatical errors in only one paragraph of any paper.Write a comment indicating that the
errors in this section are typical of those in the entire paper.
·Circle
errors you see and list at the end of the paper the most typical types of
grammatical errors you found.It is the student’s responsibility to identify and fix errors.
Writing is a topic that is taught
in Language Arts, but practiced in every subject.If we want our students to become better writers, it is
incredibly important that every teacher addresses grammar.There is a tremendous amount of value
in students seeing their mistakes, and correcting them.If we all work together on this, we
will surely see improvement in our students’ writing scores.
Mark Gonella was kind enough to share these lessons. Both are from the CPALMS site and align with our new standards. Check them out!
Exploring "Ironic" by Alanis Morisette: Teaching Situational Irony This lesson will introduce students to the concept of irony by examining the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morisette. Verbal, situational, and dramatic irony will be explored, but the focus of the lesson will be situational irony. This lesson can be used prior to teaching longer, more complex short stories that contain situational irony.
Using Story Pyramids to Comprehend, Compare, and Contrast Through the creation of Story Pyramids, students demonstrate their comprehension of two literary texts by using evidence from the text to construct their pyramids. Students are challenged even further by using their Story Pyramid to generate a written piece comparing and contrasting the two literary works. A rubric and student samples are provided.
Today my third period class began to read The Giver. To build interest, I showed the movie trailer first. There are two good quotes in the trailer that I thought could be used to practice RACE.
The first is, "the way things look and the way things are, are very different."
"If people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong," is the second.
I wrote the second quote on the board and asked the class how many agreed with the statement. Many students raised their hands. More than I expected.
I asked, "have you all really made bad choices today?"
Students-"Yes."
Me-"OK" (who am I to disagree?)
I then told them to RACE the answer out and to give a specific example of a bad choice or decision that they made at one point in their lives.
Some students responded:
"I disagree with the statement 'if people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong.' For example, One time my dad told me not to bring my iPad into the bathroom but I did anyway. It fell in the toilet and took two weeks to get repaired. I should have just listened to my dad."
This is a complete RACE response but he wrote 'disagree' instead of 'agree.'
"I agree with the statement because a lot of people make the wrong choices and mess up their lives. Some people don't think before they act."
This is not a complete RACE response, so I asked the student to correctly restate the quote and give a specific example to back up his viewpoint.
The entire activity took about twenty minutes. I made sure to circulate and read every student response. Many student responses looked like the second example at first, but corrections were made and they all got credit for the assignment.
Spelling was not perfect. A lot of "their/they're" mistakes and "your/you're." I corrected a few capitalization and punctuation mistakes as well in that time.
The RACE writing strategy uses evidence-based writing which is a crucial strategy for our students. It is simple to use. It is very important that writing is being practiced in all content areas.
RACE stands for:
R=Restate the Question
A=Answer the Question
C=Cite evidence (using transitions such as "for example," "in the article,.." "the author suggests that...")
E=Explain how your evidence supports your answer
Here is an example:
Please support evidenced based writing by incorporating RACE into your lessons.
SIRS is a district-sponsored search engine that contains different kinds of text and multimedia. The text is already lexiled for you. The site also contains primary documents such as newspapers.
Dear Friends and Colleagues, Welcome to the Writing Korner. As you all know, the way our students are going to be assessed in writing is changing. Sixth and seventh grade teachers were exposed to the new practice assessments last school year, while the eighth grade teachers prepared for FCAT Writes. In order to meet the new challenges presented by a brand new assessment system, I thought it would be beneficial to create a virtual meeting area to share ideas. The Writing Korner is that area. Click on the tabs above for valuable information such as rubrics and item specs. Please feel free to post resources, ideas or random musings as you see fit. Have a great year, Matt
