2023 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Conference, Nashville, TN
Lisa Lapina, Grade 1 Teacher; PhilWP Teacher Consultant
Javaha Ross, Grades 1-8 Librarian; PhilWP Teacher Consultant
Trey Smith, Grades K-8 Digital Literacy Teacher; PhilWP Teacher Consultant
Teachers in our Philadelphia Writing Project network are engaging in inquiries and creating curriculum resources to support civically engaged argument writing in K-12 classrooms.
Our emerging resources draw upon:
primary sources from the Library of Congress;
argument writing approaches from the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (Arshan & Park, 2021; Friedrich et al., 2018); and
Gholdy Muhammad’s (2020, 2023) Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy Framework.
Our team of teachers has combined three approaches for creating text sets:
First, the Library of Congress, in curating historical primary sources for classroom use, often crafts primary source sets that invite students to compare and corroborate sources while also engaging with multiple perspectives. The Library of Congress has also provided resources to help teachers reflect as they select primary sources for classroom use.
Second, the National Writing Project's College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP; Friedrich et al., 2018) organizes argument writing mini units around text sets that provide multiple perspectives on a given issue or topic.
Third, Gholdy Muhammad (2020, 2023) provides examples of and rationales for layering multimodal texts in culturally and historically responsive curricula.
With these three strands of work as our guides, we have woven together current news articles and videos, informational texts and infographics, historical primary sources in a range of formats (e.g., photos, prints, legislation, maps), and other sources like picture books and even novels. In our text set on child labor, we include images and other primary sources from the Library of Congress that shed light on the history of child labor and laws. We combine these texts with recent news stories about recent changes to child labor laws across the country.
Teachers may use text sets for a variety of purposes to support civic argument writing:
Show how creating civic arguments involves joining a conversation in progress (Harris, 2017).
Provide ongoing opportunities for students to read, write, and discuss as they deepen their understandings and develop their own claims.
Introduce multiple perspectives on an issue and reinforce the idea that most issues are nuanced and do not have simple “pro” and “con” positions.
Invite reflection on the reliability and usefulness of sources and evidence through sourcing, contextualizing, comparing, and corroborating.
Introduce mentor texts to support students in creating their own texts for civic purposes.
Each of our curriculum collections includes a text set that can be used and modified for classroom use to support civic argument writing.
In this webinar recording, Philadelphia Writing Project teacher consultants Javaha Ross and Trey Smith describe a process for creating a text set that supports civic argument writing.
Arshan, N. L. & Park, C. J. (2021). Research brief: SRI finds positive effects of the College, Career, and Community Writer’s Program on student achievement. SRI International. https://www.sri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/C3WP-Scale-Up-Research-Brief-April-2021_Acc.pdf
Friedrich, L., Bear, R., & Fox, T. (2018). For the sake of argument: An approach to teaching evidence-based writing. American Educator, 42(1), 18-40.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2021). They say, I say: The moves that matter in academic writing (5th ed.). W. W. Norton.
Harris, J. (2017). Rewriting: How to do things with texts. University Press of Colorado.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Mirra, N. (2018). Educating for empathy: Literacy learning and civic engagement. Teachers College Press.
Muhammad, G. (2023). Unearthing joy: A guide to culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning. Scholastic.
Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press.
