Teaching Argument- Do I have to?

Nobody is perfect. Especially not me…

I can admit when I am beaten. Listen, I love teaching! I really do. But every now and then I feel like I am David going up against Goliath. This happens to me every year I teach logical fallacies and and fallacious reasoning. I dread it leading up to these standards and I breathe a sigh of relief once we have moved on to something else. I can’t say that I even get better every year, but I never give up.

This year will be different. I have a new plan of attack. I will make learning about argument fun! 😉 Or die trying…

Save time… combine!

We are reading The Giver in class. My students love this book! Building on their enthusiasm, I will have them create either digital or real-life posters using appeals and fallacies to sway outsiders to either come to Jonas’ town, or to stay away. The idea came to me since I have been playing devil’s advocate, trying to convince students how “wonderful” it would be to live there. Their responses are hilarious (and always include evidence from the text). And by the way, I have yet to convince a single one of my students that this community would be better than ours. LOL

 Grouping… with a twist!

Students will now have the opportunity to sway me, and their classmates. I have created example posters to guide them. They can work in groups or alone. Usually I let them decide on group size for a project like this, so there’s less stress. I’ll accept groups up to four persons.

I will also give them advice in choosing members. Students may work with their friends, but if neither of them can draw or they are not comfortable with technology or maybe they are great at executing ideas, but terrible at coming up with them, then they should think strategically and choose team members who can add value.

I am going to try something new this year. I have six reading classes. Since I know that many of my students are friends, I am going to allow them to work with partners from other class periods. The one caveat will be that if they have partners in another class period, they each will have to present to the class period they belong to.

Back to the project…

Students can create a poster digitally (using MS word, Canva, PicMonkey, etc.) making sure their photos, graphics, etc. are not copyrighted. They can chose the more traditional poster-board display, as well. They have to select one of the appeals or fallacies from the poster (or they can choose one not listed, as long as in their writing, they clearly explain in a student-friendly manner the appeal of fallacy they selected) as the basis for their argument.

As an  example, one of my bandwagon posters will have five chairs numbered 46-50. All but one of the chairs will have a teen sitting in it. The tagline will read, “There’s still a place for you.”

The posters will have a writing component attached. Students will have to explain (in addition to who was responsible for what) which appeal or fallacy they selected, why they picked it, how they used it, and rate it’s effectiveness (i.e. explain which audiences would be the most and the least swayed and tell why).

How much is saving time really worth?

I have created a handout to help them keep the different appeals and fallacies in their minds.(You can see it on TPT, although unlike some of my other resources on that site, this one is not free. However, for the amount of time and effort I put into creating this document, I think two dollars is a bargain!) You could use your own resource, textbook, etc., but I needed something that made sense as quickly as possible, something I knew my students would want to use because it’s so simple. This will be my go-to document each year from now on so I don’t have to stress about teaching argument…ever…again.

Anyway, I can’t wait to share student samples once the project is finished.

Together in teaching,

Elyza Rodriguez 🙂

Standard Alignment

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.8
Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.