Teacher Commentary

I type up a few examples conclusions students wrote from the prior activity that illustrate strong and weak qualities of claims. Students read through these examples to get a concrete understanding of what comprises a high quality claim.

It’s important for me to have a clear idea in my own mind of what criteria I want students to generate. That helps me look for student writing samples that will elicit those ideas from students. For example, I want “based on evidence” to be one criterion, so I purposely select an example that is not based on evidence so students will notice that and point it out. Another criterion I want students to come up with is that a claim should be “concise and clear,” so I pick an example that is rambling. Students will say “this person doesn’t really have a point.” And I’ll ask “if this isn’t good then what criteria should we develop based on this?” And they’ll say “a good claim should be clearly stated, have one clear point.”