Make an argument = give a speech. Make an argument = write a paper. Make an argument = succeed in a debate. Make an argument = collaborate with others. Make an argument = real world skill.
The ability of a child to make an academic argument is an essential skill for school success. Children who are able to use this skill quickly find success in school while children who cannot flounder in continuing waves of uncertainty and inept attempts at school assignments.
An academic argument is the creation of an academic statement and the stipulation of ideas that support the truth of the statement. Although it may seem formulaic, the application of an academic argument to so many school situations makes it a tool that can be used over and over again with each use seeming unique and fresh. An academic statement can arise in any and all school subjects and at every grade level. It works in exacting subjects like math and computer programming as well as in subjective subjects like language arts and art or music. It works in book subjects like history as well as in lab subjects like science and woodshop. It is both cognitive and hands-on and really is made more powerful and easier with the use of Internet resources.
How does it work?
A third grade curriculum often includes the expansion of family and community concepts with towns and cities, rural and urban, and what people do in these settings. Children read stories about people who live in towns, cities and in the country. When third graders make academic arguments, they find a particular concept or idea and then demonstrate what they know about it.
Idea – Machinery has made farming easier and helps farmers to produce more food.
Idea – People who live in towns live closer to many of the services they need. There is a convenience to living in a town.
Idea – Cities are different depending upon where they are located in the United States.
Each of these ideas requires a child to use what she read in texts and supplemental readers, heard and saw in media presentations, and experienced in her own life to define the terms in these ideas. What are examples of farm machinery? How is a horse-drawn machine different than a gas-powered or electric machine? How much land could a farmer plow in a day using a horse-drawn plow or a tractor-drawn plow? Could a farmer pick more corn by hand or with a gas-powered corn picker? Would a farmer using only hand work produce more or less food than a farm using machinery?
What are the kinds of services that people need? What kinds of services are located in your town? How far does your parent have to drive from home to each of these services? How far does a family living on a farm near (place nearby) have to drive? Name all of the grocery stories, gas stations, hospitals or clinics, hardware stores, and clothing stores you can think of that are in your town.
Use a map to find these cities – Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Kansas City. Use the map to list as many differences between these cities that you can identify. Also, list the similarities that you can identify.
Children engage in these kinds of studies all of the time. The dilemma is that we do not help them to consider each of these studies as an academic argument – an opportunity to state an idea and provide examples that make the idea true. Teaching and using this strategy can immediately assist students to see a purpose in their academic assignment, grab hold of a strategy for understanding the information they are exposed to, and to verify their personal learning.
The strategy easily becomes more complex as the child advances in grade level and subject. The strategy is easy because its application remains much the same no matter the grade level. The application becomes more complex as the breadth and depth of information the child has available to make a valid argument is enriched. A third graders academic argument about the convenience of city life is not valid for a high school student’s study of urban blight. However, the strategy a high school student uses is only an extension of the strategy learned in elementary school.
Learning how to make an academic argument is a key to school success.