Logistics

Argument-Centered Education will be offering two full days of professional development workshops on July 20th and 21st, sponsored by the Chicago Public Schools Department of Social Science and Civic Engagement, free to all CPS teachers.  Running from 8:30am – 3:00pm, at the Garfield Park CPS offices (2651 W. Washington Blvd.), professional development credit will be issued by the Illinois State Board of Education and CPS for participating teachers.

The workshops are free for those who work in CPS schools, and though the workshops are extensively enrolled, interested educators should contact social science manager Martin Moe, msmoe@cps.edu, to register.

Curriculum and Content

The title of this two-day workshop sequence is “Reasoning and Refutation: Improving the Instruction of Argument Making and Argument Writing.” Participants will learn readily teachable methods of reasoning that go beyond the call to “connect evidence and claim” and present students with steps to accent, connect, and emphasize elements of text that make the most compelling case for a student’s argumentative position.  They will also explore several techniques for effective refutation of contrasting or competing arguments — an under-recognized corollary to advancing a claim, and a stage inherent to convincing, college-ready spoken and written argument.

Throughout the two days, we will examine specific ways that argument-based discussion in class relates symbiotically to argument writing, in essays and extended response formats.  And teachers will both enact and analyze these argumentation activities and processes, and will have an opportunity to reflect on and discuss their applicability to curriculum they plan to use this fall.

Content will be drawn from nexus points between the C3 Framework for Social Studies, CPS’s “Participate” civics curriculum, and the Social Science 3.0 Framework.