Leaders in Literacy Conference

Teachers will learn how to boost student engagement when learning to make claims and cite textual evidence. This session will demonstrate how a 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teacher used mystery scenarios to teach claim, evidence, and reasoning (CER). Using these mystery scenarios can be a catapult for teaching students the art of argument writing. With this strategy, students are able to articulate a claim using valid reasoning and more effectively understand how to refute a counterargument. Understanding an opponent’s counterargument is essential to developing a sound argument. Participants of this session will learn scaffolding strategies that will expand across other disciplines. At the end of this session, teachers will gain practices and strategies to help promote argumentative skills, analysis of real-world argumentative texts, and the creation of evidence-based arguments.