Argumentative Writing Literary Essay Review Stations DIGITAL & PRINT
EB Academics by Caitlin and Jessica- Zip
EB Academics by Caitlin and JessicaDescription
Looking for a game-changer to add strength and eloquence to your students’ essays? Use these Writing Review Stations a week prior to starting your Argumentative Writing or Literary Essay unit! Your students will review key writing concepts in an engaging and meaningful way with these four stations. Each station allows for review and practice, focusing on a key component of writing a literary essay or argumentative writing piece.
You can choose to utilize these stations in various ways in your classroom. Some of them are more student-directed than others. You may want to spend time working with students at the “Finding the Right Evidence” station more so than the other stations.
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WHAT’S INCLUDED:
★ Instructions for Use
A step-by-step guide for understanding and setting up each station before your lesson.
★ Station One: Connecting a TAG (title, author, genre) with a Summary
In this station, students focus on becoming more fluent in their introductory paragraphs. Students work with multiple examples to practice composing effective sentences to begin their essays.
★ Station Two: Differentiating Between Claims and Statements
Before we can expect students to write claims of their own in a Response to Literature, students need to know what a claim is. In this center, students review the definitions of statements and claims. Then, they work together to sort sentence strips into the appropriate column, either “Statements” or “Claims” and justify why they made their choice. This center is also nice to have on hand throughout the year if individual students need a bit more one-on-one practice.
★ Station Three: Introducing Quotes
One writing pet peeve is when students simply drop a quote into the middle of a paragraph with little to no context. This station reviews how to properly “set the scene” before even writing, “The author states…” in a body paragraph. You’ll stick with an example from Charlotte’s Web before students practice on their own.
*PLEASE NOTE: In this station, we have included a blank copy for you to add in your own evidence or body paragraph that corresponds to any piece you are currently reading in class. This way, you don’t have to use the examples we’ve included if it doesn’t work for your students.
★ Station Four: Finding the Right Evidence
This station walks students through a mini-lesson on selecting the most appropriate evidence to support a given claim. After reading a claim, you will discuss four different options for a possible quote to be used with that claim. Students should critique each quote, asking themselves, “How does this quote support the claim?” Then students will see if they can create justification that would build upon the evidence. This exercise is a reminder to students not to simply choose any quote when asked for evidence, but rather be thoughtful and purposeful in their selection.
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*IMPORTANT: This resource includes our Claims vs. Statements Sort AND some of the activities from our Claims + Evidence Activities in Literary Analysis and Argumentative Writing. There are only TWO new activities in this resource - Connecting TAG + Summary and Introducing Quotes.*
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Looking for more writing resources for your middle school classroom? Check out these other great resources we have in our store.
★ EVIDENCE GRAPHIC ORGANIZER FOR LITERARY OR INFORMATIONAL TEXT
★ 7 DAY LITERARY ANALYSIS BOOTCAMP
★ HOW TO TEACH LITERARY ANALYSIS - A COMPLETE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
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