Day 8: #SOL16- Teaching About Reasons and Evidence

The Slice of Life Challenge is hosted by the inspirational writers of Two Writing Teachers. Each March, they invite people to join them in a commitment to write every day. Here's to another year of daily slicing!


One of the most challenging things for fifth-graders is to begin to develop their sense of logical thinking. By logical thinking, I mean their ability to build an argument. In order to build an effective argument, we have to create reasons and then support those reasons with evidence. I tell the students that it's like a pyramid with the claim on the top, the reasons on the second layer, and the evidence at the bottom supporting the reasons. Somehow the effective linking of a claim with the word because with a reason is extremely difficult for elementary students--sometimes it's difficult for adults, as well. I once heard someone say that because is one of the most misused words in the English language, and I didn't understand what she meant at first. However, now that I study how children learn to construct arguments and how hard it is to teach effective arguing, I understand how the meaning and use of the word because is a challenging concept.

Today, I guest-taught in a fifth-grade classroom, and they were preparing for a debate about whether or not their school should serve chocolate milk. This has become a popular debate in workshop-oriented classrooms because it is at the core of Teachers' College fifth grade argument curriculum.

I made a chart to try to guide the students into thinking within categories of reasons, as opposed to lists of evidence. An important differentiation to make with students is the difference between why, what, and how. When we answer the question of why, we are usually in the land of reasons. I called these why questions, and I taught the students that the answers to these types of questions go with the word because.

I tried to even develop a formula for them to use to test their reason. If their claim couldn't connect with the word because to their reason, then chances were high that what they thought was a reason was actually evidence. One girl understood that I meant when I wrote the following "equation" for her:

CLAIM + BECAUSE+ AN EXPLANATION= A REASON

Evidence is important, and I kept that clear as I worked my way through this chart. Sometimes evidence can even work as a reason. For example, in the above chart, the fact that chocolate milk can cause heart disease could work as a reason if the arguer wanted to keep saying more about heart disease, and it could also work as evidence if it is supporting the idea that chocolate milk should be banned because it causes health problems. The important distinction is that evidence answers the questions what or how.

During the half hour of work time the students had, they began to sort their information in much more meaningful ways, thinking about how the puzzle of reasons and evidence could all fit together to support their claim. Arguing and logic are such important skills, and it's fun to watch students begin to understand the power of a strong argument.

Happy Slicing,

It's Monday! Here's What I'm Reading

Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye and Ricki Ginsburg at Unleashing Readers cohost It's Monday! What are You Reading? weekly on their blogs.  To see what others are reading and recommending each Monday, or to participate, be sure to head over to these blogs.

Good news: This post is not going to be an expensive one to read...

Last week, I was involved in a professional discussion with teachers about the challenge of finding mentor tests for opinion writing. We came up with a few picture books that demonstrate some craft moves-- I Wanna New Room by Karen Kaufman Orloff and illustrated by David Catrow,  Dear Mrs. LaRue by Mark Teague, Earrings by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Nola Langner Malone... However, as much as I love these books for their humor, voice, and structure, they don't provide the mentoring that would really help fourth-grade and up students see what they need to do in order to write high impact opinion/argument texts.

I spent some time reading on-line pieces, and I was really excited to find change.org. I HIGHLY recommend this website for appropriate, engaging, relevant letters that can be analyzed for craft moves, structure, and elaboration. For example, there is a letter petitioning McDonalds to offer healthier alternatives, and I am including just one paragraph of the letter:

Adding plant-based protein options at McDonald's will appeal to workers out for a quick lunch, families with health-conscious members out to dinner, children on field trips, and anyone looking for something different than the current menu at McDonald’s where even the french fries contain beef flavoring (they don't in Europe, incidentally)! According to a recent survey, more than one-third of Americans already buy meat substitutes for reasons that range from health to ethics! So why not make a meatless option available at one of America’s favorite restaurant chains for everyone to enjoy? Healthy living should be about progress, not perfection, and this is an easy step that McDonald’s could be taking. 
(https://www.change.org/p/mcdonald-s-it-s-time-for-a-healthy-meatless-option)


 This passage could be used as a demonstration text to inspire students to:

• use punctuation deliberately for voice and reader engagement
• include statistics and facts to strengthen an opinion/argument
• state a clear claim that aligns with reasons and evidence

Change.org has TONS of letters and petitions ranging from G/PG rated ones to more provocative, controversial issues. I am sure that you will find examples of opinion writing that will strengthen your workshop instruction across elementary grades and into middle school, as well!

Happy reading,

Trying to Get Those Third-Grade Opinions Flowing...

Thanks to Stacey, Dana, Tara, Betsy, Anna, and Beth, the amazing writers and thinkers who host the Slice of Life community every Tuesday. Everyone is welcome to join with posts or comments at twowritingteachers.wordpress.com!

This afternoon, I got to work with one of our third-grade teachers as her students work their way through the first week of their opinion writing unit. I committed to working with a group of struggling writers for a few days in a row in an effort to jump start them. We'll see how that goes... Admittedly, this work is a deviation from the usual choice and independence that we strive for in writing workshops, but we are experimenting with gradual release of writers who tend not to produce too much.

Yesterday, the five of us (the four students and I) thought of various ideas around what they might want to change, and we tried to write a collaborative piece about having a classroom pet. This didn't go so well. They each took different reasons to work on, reasons that we had thought up together, but... J. wrote almost nothing, M. wrote very little, and P. struggled because he didn't think that we should have a pet in the classroom. T. wrote a lot, but some of his work lost focus. Because I wanted them to feel like they accomplished something big, I combined their work and made copies for each of them. They were a little miffed that the pencil didn't show up on the copies, and they were also wishing that they had written more. 

"Don't worry," I said. "We will have another chance to write a piece together today."

They were thrilled to see that I had Sharpies for them to use. (I didn't tell them that they each had different colors so I'd know who wrote what and that they had pens so that they couldn't erase!)

Today, we wrote about why they love their teacher, and their responses were heartwarming. Sometimes, we can write opinion pieces to celebrate something, and they were so happy to do this! They were much more inspired by this topic than by trying to talk their teacher into a pet.

I first had them give me a bunch of ideas about why they liked their teacher, and I wrote their reasons, memories, stories, and examples on Post-its. They discovered that the reasons, the examples, and the stories sort of "team up," and the Post-its allowed us to move ideas around into groupings. Once we sorted the Post-its, we worked on balancing the piles a little--making sure that there were enough examples and details for each of the reasons. With minimal debate, each of the four students committed to write each of the four piles.

I worked on having them verbalize what they were going to write until T. and J. were basically bursting. 

“Please, can we just get writing?” T. said. (Yes, he really did say that.)

 M. was VERY worried by spelling. The permanence of the pen was a little debilitating to her at first, but once she got going and let go of the concept of perfect spelling, she got a fair amount written.

We did not touch on introduction or conclusion, but we’ll get there. For right now, just grouping like information and including details to develop their ideas was enough. Tomorrow, I’m thinking we will write about one of their essential teachers, working through the same process but more quickly, trying to get to the concept of introducing and concluding statements. Ultimately, I want them to take the confidence they're gaining as writers and transfer the skills they are practicing to topics of their own choosing and pieces that they plan and write on their own.

Gearing up for March!

Happy writing!

Strong Opinions About Books for Second-Graders

Slice of Life is hosted by the writing community at twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Everyone is welcome to join in and it is an incredible way to build camaraderie with other writers, teachers, learners, and thinkers.

Across our district, our second-graders have been writing opinion pieces from the new unit from Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Writing About Reading is one of the books within the new Units of Study that were published a year ago and I have loved watching the children experience this work.

During the first two bends of the units, children learn to form opinions about various aspects of books--characters, pictures, titles, favorite parts, author messages... Initially, many of the pieces I read were book recommendations that went along the lines of "you should read this book because", but gradually I have seen our students move away from this sort of uninspired recommendation to meatier opinion statements. Yesterday, I was a guest in a class and the teacher and I had an impromptu debate as to whether Mercy Watson was a hero in Mercy Watson to the Rescue by Kate DiCamillo. I took the less popular stance of her being a hero, and the kids got right behind their teacher, finding evidence in the book to support the statement that Mercy was only after buttered toast and should get no credit at all for getting a rescue team to the Watson house to save her family when they fell through the bedroom floor. I had a second copy of the book and a few of the students came over to my side.

Students were reading exact lines to and with me in order to prove their claim and one student even pointed out the look on Mercy Watson's face. During their independent work time, their teacher and I challenged them to use the phrase "for example, on page ___" and many of these second-grade students were spot on at citing evidence from the text of their independent books in order to prove their points. 

Some of my favorite debates that I have had with second-graders so far have been:

• who was to blame for Brother Bear's bad grades in The Berenstain Bears' Report Card Trouble.
• whether Papa Bear was a good parent in The Berenstain Bears' Too Much TV.
• whether Pinky is a strong character in the Pinky and Rex series (I was arguing that Pinky is a weak character.)
• whether Poppleton was self-centered in Poppleton in Winter.
• whether Mercy Watson is greedy when she eats everyone's popcorn in Mercy Watson Something Wonky This Way Comes.
• who is smarter--Minnie or Moo in Minnie and Moo Go to the Moon.

This unit has led students to think about reasons and go on a hunt for evidence to support those reasons with energy and purpose. I'll be posting more about it as we finish it up, but for now, I have to say that it has been great fun to authentically argue about books with second-graders. At first, they really can't believe that a teacher would say something so outrageous, and then they become entirely committed to proving me wrong, which is exactly what I want them to do.

Happy slicing!

What is the Difference Between Reasons and Evidence?

I was coaching in a fourth-grade classroom this week and I was so glad that I had just attended Shanna Schwartz’s workshop on Writing About Reading with Primary Students. I have already written two other posts about my day at Teachers College, one about the guiding principles of workshop instruction that Shanna reviewed and another about ways to incorporate and integrate debate into classrooms. Another major element of her workshop involved helping teachers to know how to teach the difference between reasons and evidence. This part of the workshop was incredibly relevant as I worked with this fourth-grade teacher and her students.

We are in the middle of our Personal Essay unit in most fourth-grade classrooms, so students are beginning to think about their boxes and bullets, establishing their reasons and their evidence. After the mini-lesson, where I taught about the difference between these two, one boy worked on his baseball essay.

His thesis: “Baseball is a great sport.” Okay, a little overdone and simple, but I went along with it.

His reasons: I can hit home runs, I can catch deep hits, and I can run to first base. 

"You have done such a great job of picturing yourself playing baseball and really thinking about the parts that are important to you," I told him. Conferences should always include an authentic compliment and I find that this practice is especially important as a visiting teacher. 

He hadn't done a whole lot of writing, so it was easy for me to figure out that I wanted to get him to understand that what he had written were examples and not reasons, a concept that is challenging to many students as they study opinion writing. Sometimes figuring out my highest leverage teaching move for an individual student is tricky when I'm on the fly, especially if they have a lot of writing that they are presenting to me.

Fortunately, my lesson had involved using post-its, so his "reasons" were each on a post-it. I grouped the three together so that it looked like this: (My writing in this picture, not his--I did not think about pulling out my phone and snapping a picture, and I should have...)

I was hoping that he would see that his reasons were actually evidence. As soon as I asked him what all three had in common, he smiled. “You feel good about yourself,” he said. Exactly! I helped him rework his thinking: “Baseball is a great sport, not because you hit home runs, but rather, because you feel good about yourself. For example, one time, I hit a home run...” Together, we made a big green post it that went on top of the other three, uniting them with the reason. 

Explaining the difference between reasons and evidence is tricky, but incredibly important. Here are some of the suggestions from Shanna’s workshop:

• A reason should answer the question WHY. Last year, I heard someone say that “because is the most incorrectly used word in our language.” In my student’s case, hitting a home run does not make baseball a great sport. Baseball is a great sport because it offers opportunities to feel good about yourself.
• Evidence should answer the questions what or when. For example or one time or I remember when are all terrific lead-ins for evidence.
• A reason is a pattern that happens over and over again. It’s not just about the time that you caught the deep ball. The pattern is the feeling that you get whenever you make a good play.

In the fifth-grade Research-Based Essay unit in the new Writing Units of Study,  an argument is compared to a house of cards and I love this analogy. You have to start with a claim, support it with reasons, and substantiate those reasons with evidence, examples, and proof. At any point within that process, the structure has the potential to collapse so keep your claim clear, your reasons important, and your evidence relevant!

Happy arguing,

,

Argument and Debate in Primary Classrooms

I have written about TC workshops several times on this blog. I do this not only because these are some of the most popular posts, but also because writing about them makes me reflect and revisit the learning from these days. These workshops provide an incredible amount of information coming at me fast and furious. It’s an important time for me to remember Alan Wright’s wise words that writers live life twice. 

Shanna Schwartz presented a workshop on writing about reading that was specifically geared toward second-grade teachers, but the information was relevant to many other grades. I have already written one post about the messages she reminded us regarding overall literacy here. This second post is more about the details of opinion writing and how it lives in classrooms. I will write one more post about the differences between reasons and evidence.

Shanna talked about the fact that we all have a process that we need to have in place in order to become writers: hearing-thinking-talking-writing. Because most of what young children have heard by the time they arrive at kindergarten is narrative, children typically have an easier time re-creating stories. Therefore, we need to expose students to opinions and arguments whenever we can. As I review my notes from the day--and I took A LOT of notes--I have tried to pull out some of the most important points, messages, themes, and strategies:

• We should all make sure that we know the difference between opinion and argument. My favorite color is an opinion. It is what it is and it is a fact about me. When we talk and think about teaching opinion and argument, it’s important to remain aware of whether an opinion is debate-worthy. Sometimes, we can establish reasons and evidence for our opinions, but they might not move into the debate-worthy column.

• Argument is important to teach for several reasons that go well beyond the fact that it is an important component of the Common Core State Standards. I loved how Shanna talked about argument writing being inherently supportive of the building children’s grit and growth mindsets. How important for children to recognize that they can have an opinion and if they support that opinion with enough convincing evidence, then they may convince others of their idea and create movement around them!

• We have many strategies that we can use to weave argument and debate into our daily routines:
• Collect some pictures from the internet--
• dogs vs. cats--which is a better pet?
• coffee vs. tea--which is a better drink?
• suburbs vs. city--where is a better place to live?
• McDonald’s vs. Subway--which is the better place to eat?

The list goes on, as it contains anything worthy of different opinions--TV shows, video games, grocery stores. Find excitement in the mundane by creating opinions and debates over them.

• We should use post-its as if we owned stock in them. We can create spectrum lines and have students place their post-it somewhere along the spectrum. Fairy tales offer an amazing venue for talking about “to what extent?” and moving post-its around. Shanna read us Hansel and Gretel. “Where on the line of good to evil line will you place your post-it for the father? Where will you place your post-it for the step-mother? Why? Defend your decision!” she challenged us. Placing the stepmother’s post-it as far as it can go toward evil on the first page of the book means that she can not become any more evil...hmmmm...

• When we think about how to develop our students and build their abilities to argue, Shanna offered some great suggestions:
• Move kids from the obvious to the less obvious
• Nudge them to say something a little controversial, like “coffee is for tough people and tea is for wimps...” Push for statements that could get people into an argument.
• Take ANY opportunity that you can to build students’ oral language because this will develop their skill base for writing. Develop compelling statements and constantly look for ways to incorporate reasons and examples throughout the day.

For me, perhaps the most important part of the day was when Shanna talked about the difference between reasons and examples for students. I am crafting a separate post for this that I will put up in the next couple of days. 

The workshops at Teachers College always challenge my thinking and provide incredible amounts of information. Thank you, Shanna, for a great day.

As an additional note to this post which I wrote a few days ago, I must give a shout out to Maggie Beattie Roberts who hosted an incredible twitter chat last night about working debate into classrooms. You can read the archives because she storified it by clicking here.

Teachers College Workshop with Shanna Schwartz

There are many aspects that I love about my job as our district's Writing and Social Studies Coordinator, but one of my favorites is that I get to go to Teachers College at Columbia University a few times a year for day-long workshops on all different aspects of literacy. If you ever have a chance to attend a session, take it! In the meantime, a quick reminder: the Teachers College Reunion is on March 22. It is free and open to anyone with an interest in reading and writing. You are guaranteed to leave this day inspired and full of ideas for teaching!

The most recent workshop that I attended was an all day presentation from Shanna Schwartz. Although it was specifically geared toward second-grade teachers, I kept a running list of the ideas and suggestions that ring true in every unit across multiple grades.

Some tips for literacy in classrooms:

• During read-alouds, do a lot of asking what the author is doing to make us feel a certain way. Encourage students to do this whenever possible.
• End any accountable talk conversation by verbalizing (or writing on chart paper) a summary or mini-essay of that conversation. Really good conversations should end with conclusions. As this practice becomes more of a routine in your classroom, ask students, “Does anyone want to practice ending our conversation today?”
• Many of us do far too little on telling students what words mean and our students need vocabulary! Shanna uses a 3-part definition to expand vocabulary:
• Say what the word is.
• Give an analogy and a sentence.
• Say what the word is not. (This does not have to be an antonym, but does need to be related to the word in a way that the kids can understand.)
• Being able to use more words for characters and traits helps us understand characters better. Children tend to use approximations of words and we, as teachers, want to move kids toward accuracy to help them understand their characters more deeply.

Some general tips for writing workshop:

• Read students many examples of what you are asking them to write. You can’t read them enough. Why? This will help them move away from formulaic writing and keep their own voices ringing loud and true in their writing. You want to establish the understanding that there are more than one way to write a story or an information book or an argument. Whatever you can do to honor and develop students’ voices in their writing, do it!
• At the beginning of any writing unit, the number one thing is to have energy and excitement. Don’t correct anything on the first day! Walk around spreading energy and using the line, “Yes, and...” to keep students going. (BTW, “Yes, and...” is a powerful way to teach throughout any unit!)
• Drawing works really well to get some students to begin to write at higher grade levels, as well as primary ones. Drawing is not just limited to narrative writing, but also works for other genres, as well.

Some tips when thinking more specifically about argument/opinion writing:

• Keep a suggestion box in the room for students to put debate ideas into and visit the suggestions often. Make debate part of your daily routine.
• Understand the difference between reasons and examples. If it answers the question of why, it’s a reason but if it answers the questions of what or when, it’s an example. 
• Use the phrase “Consider...” a lot in your classroom and you will find that students will be readier to write opinions and arguments.

More to come about opinion writing for young children, as that was the focus of the workshop. However, Shanna gave too many important reminders about overall literacy to not share those, as well.

Off to cheer for the Patriots!

Slice of Life- Choose2matter.org

Every Tuesday, Stacey and Ruth host the Slice of Life on their blog, twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Please feel free to join this community by posting or commenting on any of the linked posts.

Over the last few weeks, I have become increasingly involved in the Choose 2 Matter Community, a project started by Angela Maiers. Angela is challenging young people to  develop projects that solve problems in our world--projects that they can manage that will make the world a better place. Until the middle of June, she is spearheading a contest for young people between the ages of 5-18 to submit quests that they have created to solve problems within their worlds, stemming from her conviction that we all matter. Angela's TedTalk is extremely powerful and one to watch if you haven't already. It's one of the longer ones--almost twenty minute--but definitely worth listening to or watching.

Her translation of this work for young people can be found on the website choose2matter.org. While she is challenging hundreds of young people from around the world to submit quests, she has also created a system for young people to help organize the program.

 Through social media and connections, she has established teams with adult facilitators for storytelling, creating multi-media projects, using social media, and evaluating quests. I heard myself say yes to being the adult facilitator for the story-telling group and I have already been so impressed with the energy of middle school students from around the country to help get the word out about this project.

I believe in the power of young people and I believe in inspiring them to understand their power. I think that this project has huge potential to motivate young people to act.  Here are some ways that you can help:

• spread the word through social media. As more information comes up about choose2matter.org, please help relay the news.
• spread the word to your students and teachers.This project could work really well with some of the opinion writing units that are going on in classrooms. Maybe we could generate energy for submissions of quests.

If you can think of other ways to support this initiative or to become involved, please share them!

Thanks to Angela and her team for inspiring us all with such simple words--you matter!

Launching the Grade 1 Opinion Unit

Throughout the year, our school district has staff developers from Teachers College Reading and Writing Project come and work with our teachers. These days are always inspiring and full of learning! Yesterday, Christine Holley worked with our first-grade teachers to launch our new Opinion Writing unit. Some of the highlights of the day and my favorite comments were:

• Pre-assessment is so important because you can see what the students know and don't know. Just  give them an open-ended prompt and see what they do with it. You will learn a lot about what they know!
• "Ultimately, let's think about what is important and fun in conjunction with the (Common Core) Standards."
• When you launch a new unit, you just want a lot of energy--you want kids to be really wanting to get to their seats and write! When Christine finished her mini-lesson in about 9 minutes, she did not give students elaborate, precise directions. Off you go is a favorite line from TC and when she said this, the students went off and evaluated, rated, and wrote about their collections for over 30 minutes.
• Mini-lessons have become more balanced in the Writing Workshop with shares, conferences and strategy groups, other important learning opportunities. Christine used the share at the end of the workshop to make an important teaching point.
• Inquiry lessons are gaining importance, as well, where students look at mentor texts and examine them for what makes them effective. Warning: If you have to do too much fishing for the "right" answer, then you probably are not ready for an inquiry lesson and you should return to direct instruction. Students have to know some things about the subject before they are ready to name the traits.
• Whatever unit you are in, you are working on qualities of good writing and process. In any unit, are students planning, re-reading, learning about qualities of good writing? 

As part of the new Opinion Unit that will be described in detail in the new Units of Study writing books that should be released at the end of May, first-graders bring in collections and rate them before they get to writing. Christine taught the launch to our students in two classrooms and, I have to say, if the energy stays anywhere close to what it was yesterday throughout the unit, those children will be effective reviewers and evaluators by Memorial Day!

Happy writing,