Lesson Plan #1 – Strengthening and Weakening

Arguments
Learning Objectives:
1. Students should understand the three primary components of an argument.
2. Students should be able to differentiate between a strong argument and a weak
argument.
3. Students should understand the scholarly credibility between sound arguments.
4. Students should be able to recognize strong arguments for their particular research topic
and apply what they learned to their Inquiry Essay.

Assessment:
The students understanding of strong and weak arguments will be assessed during the
Fishbowl activity at the end of the lesson. If time permits, we also plan to hand out a notecard to
students and ask them to write what they believe worked well along with areas of improvement.
Doing so will allow us to understand the extent to which they understood the material presented
during the lesson plan.

Materials Needed:
 Handouts on “Claims as a Rhetorical Strategy”
 Pen & Paper
 Index cards containing various issues for fishbowl activity
 PowerPoint:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1F1wMG_cJV8WSphWhsZDhrTNWH8lGv5Lbf
cr591LuHZc/edit#slide=id.p

Lesson Plan - (Estimated time 55 mins)

● Free write (7-8 mins)
○ What does it mean to make an argument? What is a claim? How do claims
support or weaken an argument? What views do you plan to discuss in your
Inquiry Assignment? What claims are multiple experts and viewpoints making?
Do these claims strengthen or weaken their overall argument?

● Discussion (5 mins)
○ Pair off and share what you wrote during the free write.

● Significance of Strong and Weak Claim (5 mins)

○ Inventing Arguments pages 435 – 436 (source)
○ Brief overview of Inquiry Essay to give students an idea of the use of claims for
the assignment.
■ Goals for the Inquiry Essay include:
 ● Identify and explain to your audience the issue
● Argue for the exigence of the topic
● Pose an open-ended question that guides your exploration of the
topic and opens a field of SCHOLARLY conversation
● Synthesize multiple perspectives on a to demonstrate how experts
and stakeholders are understanding and engaging this issue.
●
● PowerPoint on Constructing Arguments (15 - 20 mins)
○ The Elements of an Argument
■ Argument: Form of communication that tries to persuade its audience to
adopt a particular position about a topic.
● Claim: Position being argued
● Reasons: Explain why the claim should be excepted
● Evidence: Supports the reasons with facts, statistics, etc.

Strong Claims vs. Weak Claims

■ An argument should be debatable, focused, and specific.
● Ex. The environment must be protected (weak)
● Ex. Congress ought to allocate 25% of its annual budget to
programs that will either preserve the environment or work to
clean up environmental disasters (strong)
● Pass out handout on “Claims as a Rhetorical Strategy” (just something to keep)
○ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kAQx5_57qLcJ:https://
english.washington.edu/sites/english/files/documents/ewp/109-
110/other/strong_vs_weak_claims.doc+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=s
afari

● Fishbowl Activity (20-25 mins)

○ The class should be sitting in a circle
○ Each student will pick a piece of paper from the fishbowl
○ Each paper will have a topic (ex. Videogames and violence) and say either
“strengthen” or “weaken”
○ Students will have time to create either a strong or weak claim about the topic
they choose
○ Students will then go around and read the claim they made aloud to the class
○ A classmate must respond to another students claim and explain why it was either
strong or weak (participation and responding will count for the students daily
participation grade)
■ We will first do a demo to show the students how the activity will play
out.
■ Example topics include: Genetic engineering, videogames and violence,
drinking age, etc.