Reading, Reading, Reading—But What About Writing?

This chapter examines the relationship between purposeful writing and the English Language Arts Common Core Standards for History/Social Studies and Science and Technical Subjects. Argumentative writing may be used to try to persuade someone, defend a position or criticize someone else's position. Writing helps students work through their learning step by step and find the information. Students are familiar with the concept of brainstorming and should be taught to think of writing as learning in a similar way. The first Standard for each grade band asks students to, Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content. When students are demonstrating comprehension through argument writing, they are using a variety of higher-level thinking skills, including building defense, justifying, creating and evaluating. Writing is a critical tool that our students must be able to use effectively in order to be successful in their future careers or in college.