Teaching Argumentative Writing in Middle School ELA: Part Two

If argumentative essays make you groan, you aren’t alone. Teaching and writing an argumentative essay can be challenging, which is why I’m diving deep into the process. In part one of this blog series, we chatted about how to introduce the concept of argumentative writing, how to use flash drafts and debates, and how to begin introducing the elements of argumentative writing. You can read that entire blog here.

Now, I want to take it a step further. Students can debate all day long, but eventually, those debates and positions will need to become beautifully written and organized essays. There is an organizational structure that should be followed, as well as lots of “rules” for writing argumentative essays. In this second part, I want to share what students need to know before they write and the process from drafting to publishing.

Introducing the Elements of Argumentative Writing

Let’s be honest, students won’t master every element of writing an argumentative essay at once. And anyone who tells you otherwise must teach robots, not humans. Instead, you’ll want to break down the process during your minilessons and by using mentor texts. By gradually introducing students to the elements of argumentative writing, they can better retain the information, practice it, and start to apply it.

Here are a few of the elements you’ll want to teach:

Author’s Purpose: Understanding why students are writing can help them better craft essays. They are six different author’s purpose: to persuade, to recount, to instruct, to describe, to explain, or to inform. 

Crafting an Argument: Students will need to select the topic, decide on their position, and choose their purpose as the author. Next, they’ll create a thesis statement, write logical subclaims, and back those up with clear and convincing evidence.

Thesis Statements: Within their introduction, students will state their position and make it clear. This usually occurs in the last sentence of the introduction paragraph, and when writing an argumentative essay, it serves as the thesis statement.

Counterclaims: It is also important that students acknowledge the opposing argument and respond to it. It’s the job of someone writing an argumentative essay to prove that the other side of the argument is illogical or incomplete.

Credible Sources: Talk about a real-world application! Having current and up-to-date research is essential to a strong argument. You also want to stress the importance of trusted and unbiased authors on the subject.

Logical Reasons: These are the sub-claims of an argumentative essay. These statements should support the thesis and answer why they have this position or why they make that claim.

Relevant Evidence: Typically, the evidence used when writing an argumentative essay takes one of three forms: facts, authoritative opinion, and logic. 

Want a free reference guide to help present and organize this information for students? Grab the Argumentative Booklet Freebie.

Begin Writing an Argumentative Essay

Okay, so it’s time to start writing and organizing students’ essays. I recommend starting by reviewing the different paragraphs: introduction, body, and conclusion. Likely, students are familiar with these, but each of these paragraphs looks a bit different depending on the type of essay. 

When writing an argumentative essay, the introduction states the position, the body paragraphs contain evidence and logical reasons, and the conclusion summarizes and restates the position. Usually, there is also a body paragraph with counterclaims.

Hopefully, you started with a flash draft. Next, have students begin organizing their information. What part of their flash draft would go into the introduction vs a body paragraph? Where did they state a claim? 

Creating an outline will be helpful here. Not only does it keep things organized, but students will be able to see what they are missing. Maybe they have a claim, but they are lacking evidence. That will be important to know before writing.

Next, students can start writing an argumentative essay using their outlines as a guide. It won’t be perfect the first time…or even the fourth. And that is okay!

Editing and Revising an Argumentative Essay

After writing, students will need to edit and revise. I highly recommend modeling this process and breaking it down for students. You can use a mentor text to model the editing process. 

When editing, students will look for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. When revising, they will evaluate organization, structure, flow, and more. As you can imagine, though, that can get overwhelming really quickly (especially if students are still covering all parts of an argumentative essay and grammar rules). 

You can simplify the editing and revising process for students by providing them with a rubric on how they’ll be graded ahead of time or even sharing a checklist they can use while editing and revising. I would also give students plenty of examples, especially when it comes to revising.

In the beginning, I recommend being a little more lenient with grading the editing and revising process. Just focus on grading the parts students should have mastered by now and let go of what they are still learning.

Argumentative Essay Unit

Teaching and writing an argumentative essay is tough, so I tried to make it a bit easier with my Argumentative Writing Unit. This unit breaks down this process step by step and provides you with scaffolded lessons and built-in differentiation. 

This unit includes everything you need to guide your students through the process of writing a compelling argument, from brainstorming to drafting and revising. Through a series of engaging mini-lessons and debates, students will learn how to use evidence effectively, develop counterarguments, and structure their writing in a logical manner. 

The best part is that this unit includes four different debate topics, so your students will have the opportunity to apply their argumentative writing skills in multiple ways. This unit will save you tons of time and is designed to make the process of teaching writing an argumentative essay an enjoyable and meaningful experience!