Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12 Review

In George Hillocks Jr.'s book Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12, Hillocks Jr. emphasizes the need to strengthen argumentative writing by establishing criteria and implementing strong reasoning to support claims in student's compositions.  This book provides excerpts of classroom discussion in which students actively participate in identifying quality arguments of fact, judgement, and policy.  The book begins with addressing simple arguments such as what constitutes a good school mascot, and then progresses to more complex discourses such as what defines murder.  Although the topics become more complicated, the process of creating criteria does not change.  When creating arguments, students need logical reasoning to support their claim, and Hillocks Jr. illustrates several strategies to support effective argumentative writing.  Once Hillocks Jr. explains who students can make arguments of fact, judgement, and policy, he expands on the topic of making judgement through criteria, supporting criteria, interpreting information.



The three arguments that Hillocks Jr. reinforces:

1. Arguments of Fact: Hillocks Jr. introduces a forensic argument in which students try to solve a a crime.  The strategies that students learn to use in this unit include:
• analyzing evidence critically in light of existing knowledge.
• interpreting the evidence to explain what it shows.
• developing warrants that show why the evidence is relevant.
• using the evidence and the explanations to solve the problem.
2. Arguments of Judgement: Hillocks Jr. asks the question, what makes a good leader, to have students understand how to write an argumentative essay through judgement.  This process has several steps :
1. Introducing the activity
2. Assessing prior knowledge
3. Ask students to evaluate merits of the topic
4. Ask students to create a list of criteria 
5. Have a whole-class discussion
6. Divide students into groups to propose warrants
7. Have students report their rules and then have the class agree on a common set of criteria
8. Use a model to illustrate the process of writing an argument of judgement
9. Have students compose their own argument of judgement
3.  Arguments of Policy: Students are given researchable and meaningful problems that gives students an opportunities to be active researchers and participants in their next writing assignment.  Hillocks explains what occurs when students write an argument of policy:
1. Identify and clarify the problem
2. Plan an investigation
3. Conduct the investigation
4. Introduce argument of policy in interpretation of results/findings
5. Conclusions and recommendations.