Provide many opportunities across the curriculum for students to share their opinions and ideas as a rehearsal for writing an argument.
Innovate on statements from the text to practise using higher modality to express further conviction through choice of:
modal verbs, for example:
modal adverbs, for example:
- Orangutans must definitely be protected from hunting.
- Orangutans must certainly be protected from hunting.
In the guided practice or joint construction, use knowledge of TEEL paragraph structure to expand a paragraph from the text.
- Lastly, fire is also a major threat to orangutans. [Add sentence here to elaborate or provide more explanation of idea in topic sentence.] In 1997, an uncontrollable forest fire burned in an area of Indonesia. It lasted for 6 months and killed up to 8,000 orangutans. [Add linking sentence making connections between paragraph and main topic of the text.]
In the guided practice or joint construction, brainstorm arguments for a controversial topic, for example, the use of animals to test cosmetics. Practise writing strong topic sentences for each argument.
Practise writing sentences in passive voice to develop a more objective tone in argument writing. Model to students how to change sentences from active to passive voice. For example:
- People are destroying the orangutans’ habitat quickly. ACTIVE
- The orangutans’ habitat is being destroyed quickly. PASSIVE
Select a familiar issue with several points of view where arguments and evidence can be developed, for example, wearing of school uniforms. In small groups, students take on point of view of one interested party, for example, parents, school principal, uniform manufacturers or students.
Ask students to brainstorm and list possible arguments to support their point of view including evidence. Students organise information into the following stages of written text - statement of issue, point of view, series of arguments from strongest to weakest, evidence to support each argument and conclusion that might suggest recommendation for action - learned in earlier stages. After sharing students’ information, teacher jointly constructs an argument with the students from one of the points of view.
Focus will be on the structure and language features of argument. This text might be constructed over a number of sessions. To follow up, students might write their own argument from another point of view during the final stage of Independent Construction (see below).