- Teacher emphasizes the benefits of hearing the positions and understanding the perspectives of others as students prepare for their essay-writing assignment.

 

[clip length—3:25]

TEACHER:  The last thing I wanna discuss, before we go to our next activity, raise your hand if, when you were in your groups, CJ, you were able… Can I get your focus back? Thank you. Raise your hand if you, in  your groups, you were able to discuss the points and you learned or discovered a new argument for the position that you wanted to support? Okay, I’m gonna say that again. I know that might not have been completely clear. Let me repeat myself. If, in your group, when you were discussing, Oh, I wrote these as my posi— my, uh, sentences or my arguments to support the position I chose. Okay? And so you’re sharing, everybody’s sharing what they wrote. Did you find a new argument to support your position, that you hadn’t thought of before? Did somebody present something to you that you hadn’t thought of before? It’s okay to admit that. Okay. Raise your hands high so I can see who we’re talking about. Okay, good. Good. I want you to be learning from one another. It’s okay. So the next question is, raise your hand in your group, if you found that everybody in your group had very similar ideas. Was there any group that had— everybody had a different idea? Kind of? Okay.

So one of the benefits, you guys, again— Cecilia. One of the benefits of us discussing this in a group is we understand that a posi— or an argument that we bring is a really strong one, ’cause we’re not the only ones who thought of it; other people in our group thought of the same arguments. So you know it’s a really strong argument and that we’re probably gonna wanna use that when we write our persuasive essay in support of our position. And second of all, we know that we can use, borrow from, other people’s ideas. ’Cause our ideas aren’t the only ones that matter. And if somebody comes up with a great idea, you’re welcome to add that into your notes. So I’m gonna give you just one minute, just one minute. And I want you take a look back up here at all the positions. Whatever position you’ve chosen. If there’s an idea up here that you want to borrow from or remember when we’re writing our persuasive essays next, [bell sounds] that you write down whatever that position is. Get that into your notes. Okay, I’m gonna give you one minute to do that now. [silence as students work]

TEACHER:  If you don’t have room, ’cause I would do it here or here. Whatever. Okay? When you’re done, you can show me that you’re done by closing your Word Generation notebooks. And you may put them away.

 

Instructions from Teacher Guide

Teacher-created position posters:

Student-created posters:

Also:

BJ's notes

Claudia's notes

Joel's notes

Nancy's notes