One of Argument-Centered Education’s partner schools — James H. Bowen High School (Chicago, IL) — is in the midst of a multi-year commitment to argumentative literacy as its Targeted Instructional Area (TIA).  Bowen is organizing instruction around academic argument, across all disciplines, and is measuring student performance growth, school-wide, on their TIA three times yearly.  They have also committed to intensive and on-going professional training and in-class implementation coaching and support in incorporating rigorous argumentation on all classroom projects and assessments.

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble . . . . The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart . . . . Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true.

— Friedrich Nietzsche (1888)

One of our partner schools is in the midst of a unit on the challenges of childhood in their English language arts classes.  One of the readings they are discussing is the 1959 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which lays out an elaboration and further definition of the UN’s foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) line that reads:

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.

Overview

The Stock Market Sector Scuffle teaches math-based financial literacy using a real-world scenario in which students have to produce and analyze a financial data set in order to build arguments to convince “investors” that their sector-based stock portfolio holds the greatest promise of financial returns. 

Overview

One instructional technique that has taken off this year at Argument-Centered Education partner schools is the use of the anchor chart.  These have often been teacher-created, sometimes they’ve been the work of departments or a leader or team working on behalf of the whole school.  Anchor charts have become an integral part of argument-centered instruction across the ACE network.