We just finished up our second Lucy Calkins unit! This one was, "The Research-Based Argument Essay", which is quite a mouthful so I just call it "Opinion Writing". This unit was really fun because the kids got to pick sides and argue, which are two of their favorite things to do! :)
The first bend of the unit had all of us pick sides on the great "chocolate milk debate". We all decided whether or not chocolate milk should be served in schools and then used articles that came with the unit to read arguments for and against our claims. We worked on taking notes while researching and then writing essays at the end of the unit.
After we finished bend I (which took forever because winter break happened right in the middle of it and then there were two separate weeks of testing that got in the way) we moved on to bend II where the kids got to pick their topics, do the research on their own, and write another essay. This one was tough to manage so I figured I'd share some of the things I did to save my sanity while trying to coach 36 kids through the writing process.
Choosing a Topic
Our fifth grade team had a little debate over whether to give students a list of choices for their topics and then provide them with the resources they would need to do research OR to leave it open for them to come up with their own topic and do the research themselves. I decided to leave it up to them just because I thought it would be more fun and I was interested in seeing what they would come up with, but our other fifth grade teachers stuck with a list of topic choices and I don't think that they found it was any less fun!
I decided that the best way for me to help them through the opinion writing process would be for me to write my own essay alongside them, so I decided to write an argument for changing the school calendar to a year round school schedule. (Many of them booed when I told them my idea but some were convinced by the end of this thing!)
Research
I let my kids do most of their research on their own and, while it was awesome to see some of the evidence they came up with, there were definitely some issues with doing it this way. They were distracted by advertisements (especially pictures of Donal Trump) and some found articles that were not from "scholarly" sources. SO, next year I think I may try doing this the other way and letting them choose from a set of topics that I have already done the research for.
I created a couple of graphic organizers to help kids take notes and keep track of their sources while they were doing research and modeled using them for my own topic before sending them off on their own.
Planning
Once they had at least three sources, I asked them to start thinking about their top three reasons to support their argument. I had them complete a planning page (below) and start putting in evidence from their research. (Again - I modeled doing this for my essay before having them do it on their own)
First Draft
My kids are the worlds slowest typers, so when they are drafting, I find that it's best to let them get all of their thoughts down on paper first and then I have them type up their writing to make editing easier. Our school does have personal google accounts for each of them, but it takes them SO LONG to find their login info, type it in, retype it in because they forgot one letter, etc... so I just made a class google account that we all get on at the same time and made folders for my different classes.
(The only issue with this was that, toward the end of the unit, they figured out that they could get on each others' documents and mess with them so I had to threaten them with being sent to the principal and possibly suspended if I caught them on someone else's doc.)
Editing
Once they started turning in their drafts it was a bit chaotic because some were done and ready to edit and others were still typing, so I used google slides to keep track of everyone and started to do editing meetings with the ones who were done.
I kept track of who needed to attend which meetings just by writing on their rubrics that I used to score their first drafts. After they attended a meeting I would put a check and the date next to it.
For my editing meetings I focused on one feature of opinion writing at a time. For example, I got all the kids who didn't write leads, or did but needed to improve them, together and gave them instructions for writing a strong lead that I took straight from the learning progression for grade 5. I would then have them read a mentor text with a strong lead and identify the features that the writer included (e.g. stated their claim, listed reasons that they would develop later, explained why their topic mattered, etc...). Then I would model writing a lead for my own paper before having them work on editing theirs on the computer.
Before publishing their final drafts, I had them use a checklist to make sure that they included all of the necessary components of an opinion writing piece. The checklist is one that I created based on the Lucy Calkins learning progression for opinion writing but with more kid-friendly language and some features that I thought needed to be added in or removed (see bottom right page in picture below).
So anyways, that's how I made this unit work for my kids and I'm sure it will look different in every classroom depending on how many kids there are, how familiar they are with Lucy Calkins' style of teaching, how much technology is available, etc... but I just thought I'd share in case anyone could use some guidance or just a general overview of this unit. If you want to grab the planning pages and checklists that I used you can grab them from my TPT store here or by clicking on the picture below. Enjoy!
