Teaching Argument Through Primary Source Evidence

A couple of weeks ago, a literacy consultant, Stevi Quate, came to our school to work with the middle and high school teachers. Our Director of Curriculum and Professional Development invited her, knowing that the English departments at both levels were implementing the CCSS, as had the Math departments, and that Social Studies and Science were soon to follow. Literacy is a big push for all those subjects in the CCSS, and Stevi would be a great jump-start into improving our practice.

Stevi sat down with my co-teacher and me one morning to help us think through improving argument skills in eighth grade Social Studies: Early American History. One of our big units of the year is The Road to Revolution, during which students take on the role of a historical Patriot or Loyalist, and debate, during a series of Town Hall meetings, the issue of rebellion. Over the past few years, the results have been something like this: "Um, so I think we should rebel because, you know, the Stamp Act was really unfair." "Yeah, me too. The Stamp Act and the Quartering Act." (Etc.) Uninspired, mindless repetition of textbook content.

Stevi introduced us to the work of George Hillocks, Jr., and his text Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12 (Heinemann, 2011). In the sample first chapter, Hillocks demonstrates his methodology for teaching students how to notice evidence, explain the "rule" (he also calls it "warrant"), and draw conclusions. He uses crime mysteries-- narrative plus illustration-- as his hook to teach the skills. He asks the question: "Is Queenie (the victim's wife) telling the truth?" Then he walks students through the deductive reasoning process.

Chart adapted from Hillocks, 2011.

We just finished two big writing units: Literary Essay (use evidence to support an idea) and Investigative Journalism (find out evidence to help you explain an idea). We also did some work with "The Historian's Process": using primary and secondary sources to draw conclusions about historical events. This Hillocks method seemed like a very natural next step to develop arguments and do even better work with primary source documents. As you know, I am a great believer in adopting/adapting good ideas.

My co-teacher and I decided that the crime mystery in Hillocks' chapter would not be a good fit for our community. Besides, I like practicing skills on things that are actually part of the curriculum; it's a two-for-one kind of a thing. So we decided to use the primary and secondary source materials from our next Social Studies chapter, Life in the Colonies (US Through Industrialism, TCI, 2011) as the texts to use for learning deductive reasoning skills.

The textbook activity directions say: "Acting as investigative journalists, you and your partner will investigate life in the American colonies. You will travel to eight places to examine primary and secondary sources and uncover the truth about what life was really like in the colonies." Each "place" has a visual and a written document, and a "headline" (fictionally) published in the English press about what life was like in the colonies.

To introduce the students to Hillocks' method, I will show them a 3-minute clip from the BBC show Sherlock, in which Sherlock Holmes, "consulting detective", explains to his new room mate, Dr. John Watson, how he knew so much about him when they first met. In his explanation, Sherlock names the detail he noticed (for example, Watson's haircut and stance), explains why it is important (suggests time in the military), and draws a conclusion (combined with his tan line, it could only mean he was serving overseas: in Afghanistan or Iraq). This engaging clip, combined with their recent work as "investigative journalists" and "historians", will lead us into the day's work.

Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility method (basically, workshop minilessons), I constructed a slideshow so that I could model the technique, have students try it out with my guidance, and eventually release them to do the work on their own. With each source and using the form above, students have to find evidence, the rule (why the evidence is important), and draw a conclusion about how accurate the (fake) English headline is. Students will need 3-5 pieces of evidence before they can confidently "prove" that the headline is either true or false. I will go through at least one visual and one written source to model/practice. Here is a sample visual slide:

Image by Janet Pohl adapted from TCI, 2011 and G. Hillocks, Jr.

The important part of this process, and what has been missing from my previous instruction, is the "rule" (or "warrant"). Students were giving evidence without explaining why it was important or how it proved anything. In their literary essays, we did some work on this using sentence starters like "This illustrates...", "This shows...", "This is important because...", "This connects to .... because...", and "Consequently...". If students can transfer some of that language and thinking into their Social Studies debate skills, their debates will be much better. So will their constructed answers on tests, and on future essays.

The next part of this process will be to teach them how to prove their point with logic, and, even more difficult, how to pick apart someone else's argument. But that's for another blog.