May Q&A: But what about argument and analysis?

The post you've been waiting for -- a guide to argument and analysis genres and mentor texts!

We’ve been on a journey this spring, haven’t we? Workshops I have been leading with teachers have nudged me and pushed me to think hard about how we can give students opportunities to practice writing skills in familiar modes year after year while building and adding new skills through differentiated genres.

So far, I’ve shared informational writing and narrative writing.

Argument and analysis took me longer.

Perhaps this is boring, but I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether we should think about them together or separately. Here’s the issue: modes address the purpose of a piece of writing. And argument and analysis do have different purposes.

But.

For the most part, the skills we teach overlap: making a claim, supporting a claim with evidence, etc.

So, long story short: I put them together. I do think student need to learn argumentation before they can learn textual analysis. And that’s what you’ll see on the continuum.

Just like the other two guides, you’ll get a continuum (five different writing products) that moves students toward increasing depth and challenge in their writing along with a minimum of three mentor texts per genre.

I absolutely cannot wait to hear what you think of this one and how you might use it! Here it is: