Working With K-5 Writers on Blocking Out Informative and Argumentative Text. What Do They Have To Say?

I met yesterday with district leaders in Trumbull Schools to discuss next steps of professional development in support of K-5 writing practices in the age of Common Core State Standards. The goal, of course, is to assist teachers in finding ways to inspire their young writers to do research and to back up their opinions as they both make an argument and inform their readers. I agree with Andrea Lunsford on this: Everything is an argument.

And here I include a comic strip. Calvin explains to Hobbes that he's on the precipice of a "graduate thesis" after the tiger stuffed animal declares that his buddy has only one declarative fact to make his case. Of course, my goal with young writers is to have a few more than one fact to make a case to declare that their thinking is the right way of knowing.

Perhaps this is the writing teachers conundrum. It is not about offering young writers the exact facts to include in informative/argumentative writing. Rather, it is sharing with young writers that the composer looks at multiple angles of any situation to justify their stance. Of course, Watterson is impishly implying that sly Calvin thinks he can get away with minimal work, but my intent of sharing this cartoon is to imply that there needs to be multiple facts listed to justify a single point of view. That is the nature of writing -- it is the development of thought to articulate what one knows to make a larger statement for why others should know this, too.

I believe I will look at commercials and brochures with K-5 teachers to help make this case. In addition, I'm hoping to use comic strip parameters to help a writer to organize the argument they wish to make with the information they provide.

My fear? Ah, the K-5 intellect and how much young people are able to comprehend and understand within such assistance. That is why the next couple of days I'm going to be thinking critically as an elementary school student to assist me in developing the skills necessarily to achieve in these genres. It's only Tuesday, but that is where my mind is.