Digital text sets for argumentative writing

I really like what the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project is doing around argumentative writing, particularly the work collecting both digital and print resources at different grade levels to help students research and take a stance on a high interest topic such as whether competitive sports in schools are beneficial or harmful.

Two of my favorites are videos that Mary Ehrenworth highlighted at the October Saturday Reunion  giving two sides of the issue of chocolate milk being served in schools, the first showing truckloads of sugar being dumped on a school bus as a vivid illustration of the way serving chocolate milk in schools is an unhealthy decision and the second featuring a smiling representative of the Midwest Dairy Council explaining all the benefits of drinking chocolate milk. (I just saw Forks Over Knives. Can you tell which side I'm on?)

Teachers are always asking for resources: for persuasive writing topics, it's important that they be recent. TC is constantly collecting and organizing these resources as well as quality samples of student work that can be used as mentor texts. I recently showed this link to teachers in an after school class around close reading and they were really enthusiastic: one of them recommended the set in the 2012-13 collection on cyberbullying.

Some teachers are worried that students will come home telling parents that a teacher has taught them a controversial topic with a bias towards one side. These text sets allow students to weigh both sides of a topic and come to their own conclusion.

Tweets I Wish I'd Tweeted: Teachers College Invitational

Once again, I was invigorated and inspired after attending the TC conference in March. As I become more familiar with Twitter (still a novice!), I've realized that it’s a helpful way of publicly taking/sharing notes on key points when I attend workshops. Unfortunately, halfway into my first workshop, a Q and A with Jon Scieska, my phone ran out of juice and I didn’t have my charger, (Fie on you, Droid!) so I had to resort to pen and paper. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to going over my notes, in the spirt of public notetaking, I’d like to share some nuggets that are TLFT (Too Late For Twitter).

Jon Scieszka talk
He likes Kafka, Borghes, and Tristan Shandy: “the original meta fiction”
He like to "mess with the idea of what a book should be"
Look for an upcoming YA novel
Guysread inspired by his son who had to read LH on the Prairie as a 3rd grader and found it tortuous
Technology—lagging in the children’s book industry
Favorite letter from a student: “We’re supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead, so I chose you.”
Kids should know there are lots of different ways to be authors and illustrators
“The main thing I learned was how not to get in kids’ way…and to really respect them for who they are as learners.”
“What I learned as a teacher was to listen.”

Stephanie Harvey on "mini inquiries"
Laying down a foundation for inquiry—kids’ questions matter
“One of the great things about inquiry is we find things we didn’t anticipate.”
The great thing about inquiry is that it leads us to more inquiry: “the more we know, the more we wonder.”
#1 way to teach inquiry is to model our own curiosity.
“Wisdom begins in wonder.” –Socrates

Linda Darling Hammond Closing Key Note
“Testing without investing” setting standards without putting resources in place
School to prison pipeline: “We choose to incarcerate rather than educate”
8 states spend more on incarceration than schools
“A war on teachers becomes a war on children.”
“We can’t fire our way to teaching excellence.”