Explore: 45 minutes
Part 1
Distribute and/or project the Evidence Organizer with the criteria for determining the strength of evidence. On this document there are 3 arguments with supporting pieces of evidence.
Use a think-aloud approach to model classifying evidence by strength.
Do this for the first argument, under “Rank the Evidence”, and then allow students to proceed to arguments 2 and 3.
Part 2
In groups of 3-4 ask students to create their own argument and provide 4-5 pieces of supporting evidence. You may wish to assign each group with a type, strong, medium, or weak.
Allow each group to share their argument and evidence with the class. The class, as a whole, should be able to classify each group’s argument and evidence as either strong, medium, or weak.