About this activity
Eight tasks on argument structure and its manipulation: label claim, evidence and reasoning in a passage about later start times; which is fact and which is opinion — practice runs until six, or practice is too long; name the counterargument to phones should be banned in class; rewrite that's dumb as an argument someone would actually listen to; spot the loaded word in only a reckless district would cut the program.
How to use it in a session
Do the labelling before the producing. Identifying claim, evidence and reasoning in someone else's argument is easier than building one, and it gives the student the frame. The rewrite task is the most immediately useful — converting a dismissal into an argument is a skill with obvious social value. The question about what evidence would change your mind is the hardest and the most worth asking. Twenty minutes covers half the board.
What to listen for
Listen for claims presented as evidence. Practice is too long is an opinion doing the work of a fact, and students reliably conflate the two. Watch the loaded word item, since reckless is the persuasive machinery of that sentence and a student who cannot see it will be persuaded by it. Notice whether they can concede a point — the final card requires it, and many students read any concession as losing.
Carrying it home
Any disagreement at home can be run this way. Asking for a claim and one piece of evidence, rather than an assertion repeated louder, changes the argument and occasionally settles it.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Ninth through twelfth, matched to argumentative writing and discussion expectations.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all eight tasks play free.
- Why teach spotting loaded language?
- Because it is how arguments are actually made. A student who can name the word doing the persuading in someone else's sentence is much harder to move by rhetoric alone.