Arguments and Claims Lesson Plan
Teacher(s): Ms. Chao
Subject: Social Studies/ELA
Lesson Title
Grade: 8
Given a Claim, Rate the Evidence (The 14th Amendment & Ferguson)
Featured Newsela Article
Ferguson's police and courts targeted African-Americans, report says (1010L)
Police departments weigh the benefits of using officer-cams (1080L)
Learning Objective
Example statement(s)
about what students will
learn from this particular
activity.
Today I am learning … rate evidence on a spectrum based on how well it supports a claim.
So I can … understand what makes some pieces of evidence stronger than others.
I know I understand when … I have rated my evidence using the color coding system (Green
= Strongest, Yellow = Strong, Red = Weaker) and explained why I gave it that rating.
Students will be able to … rate the strength of evidence that supports a given claim using an
evidence spectrum and explain why a piece of evidence is stronger or weaker than others.
Learning Standard
Include the standard that
this activity helps teach.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.1
Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says
explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.1.B
Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible
sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
Lesson Content
How will you introduce
the lesson to your
students? How will you
teach them the skills they
need to be successful?
How will you allow
students to practice the
skills they learned with
Newsela’s Write + Quiz
feature? How will you
assess mastery?
Direct Instruction:
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Example sections and
sentence starters to guide
your planning.
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Yesterday we examined the experience of African-Americans living in Ferguson
County, Missouri, in 2015, in light of the 14th Amendment, by reading the Newsela
article: Ferguson's police and courts targeted African-Americans, report says
(1010L). We then looked for pieces of evidence to support yesterday’s claim: “The
Ferguson county police department's practices violate the 14th amendment
rights of African-American citizens and must be changed.” and you annotated
the evidence you found by using a “because” statement to explain how your
evidence supported the claim.
Today we are going RATE the evidence that we found, because not all evidence is
equally strong - as you probably already know, some evidence is stronger than
others. For example, let’s say Mr. N is on trial for the murder of Mrs. X. During the
trial, a neighbor testifies that Mr. N always hated Mrs. X because Mrs. X always
played music very loudly at night. That’s evidence #1. Another piece of evidence,
#2 is Mr. N’s bloody fingerprints found all over the crime scene, including on the
knife found next to Mrs. X’s body. Which piece of evidence is stronger, 1 or 2? Give
students a moment to think about it and/or briefly discuss with an elbow partner.
Call students back to attention and ask again, “which piece of evidence more
strongly supports the claim that Mr. N is guilty of killing Mrs. X?” Ask students to
explain why they think that evidence #2 is stronger than evidence #1. Discussion
points might include:
○ evidence #1 doesn’t necessarily mean he killed her, he could have just been
annoyed.
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evidence #1 is not as directly linked to the murder of Mrs. X because it is
someone else saying that Mr. N hated Mrs. X.
there are plausible explanations for why evidence #1 can be true and Mr. N
is innocent.
evidence #2 is more directly linked to the murder.
evidence #2 cannot easily be explained away.
it’s easy to explain to someone why evidence #2 could mean that Mr. N
murdered Mrs. X.
Modeling:
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So now we’re going to rate the evidence using our text evidence that we found from
yesterday’s reading. So let’s review our claim, which is: “The Ferguson county
police department's practices violate the 14th amendment rights of AfricanAmerican citizens and must be changed.”
Now everyone please pull up the article Ferguson's police and courts targeted
African-Americans, report says (1010L) on your laptop and silently take about 57 minutes to review the text evidence that you selected and review your annotations.
(5-7 minutes of students’ silent review time) Teachers can take this time to circulate
and/or gather formative assessment data by reviewing student annotations and
having mini-conferences with struggling scholars.
Call the class back together to review what pieces of evidence were gathered. If
there are common pieces of evidence, which there will be, take a class poll to see
how many other students also chose that particular piece of evidence.
Choose 3 pieces of evidence chosen by students to highlight and discuss. Now we
are going to rate these 3 pieces of evidence. GREEN = Strongest, YELLOW =
Strong and RED = Weaker.
Discuss with the class why each piece of evidence should be given a GREEN,
YELLOW or RED rating. Here are some examples you could use:
○ “The report found that police searched people without a legal reason,
abused their authority and routinely violated civil rights.” This piece of
evidence directly supports the claim that the Ferguson county police
department’s practices violate the 14th Amendment rights of AfricanAmerican citizens and must be changed because the evidence goes directly
to the point of violating the rights of African-Americans. The 14th
Amendment says that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws.” In this piece of text evidence, it says “police searched people
without a legal reason” which is a direct example of “depriving a person of
liberty, without due process of law. So I would give this a GREEN for
Strongest. It’s pretty difficult to rebut that, it’s easy to explain, and it goes
directly to the claim.
○ “The investigation found seven racist emails that had circulated
among police and court employees from 2008 to 2011. One of them
depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.” This piece of
evidence is disturbing. When I read this, it really struck a chord. Now
breaking it down, I think it’s a strong piece of evidence because it shows that
people on the police force and court employees held clearly racist beliefs.
However, it was only 7 emails and it doesn’t show that the police
department’s practices violated the rights of African-Americans directly.
Instead, it shows that this was very likely to have happened and shows that
at least some police had a motive to treat African-Americans unequally,
which would violate the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Therefore, I’d give a YELLOW for Strong.
○ “Also, the report says Ferguson used its police and courts to raise
money. Often, this came at the expense of people who were poor and
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African-American.” This piece of text certainly shows that Ferguson’s
police and courts seemed to have particularly affected African-Americans,
however, I’m not sure how directly this links to the claim that the 14th
Amendment rights of African-Americans are being affected. It’s not clear if
this means that African-Americans were being deprived of property
(money?) without due process of law. Since the link to the claim is not as
clear and direct, I’m going to give this text evidence RED for Weaker.
○ So as you can see, after I gather my evidence for the claim, I then want to
examine the evidence and rate it, to figure out how strong and how directly
linked to the claim it is.
Check for Understanding: “So let’s review: Our claim that we are supporting is
what? Cold Call or ask for student volunteers. Answer: “The Ferguson county
police department's practices violate the 14th amendment rights of AfricanAmerican citizens and must be changed.” The 1st piece of evidence was: “The
report found that police searched people without a legal reason, abused their
authority and routinely violated civil rights.” and I gave it a GREEN for strongest
evidence. Why? Call on student volunteers or cold call. The 2nd piece of evidence
was: “The investigation found seven racist emails that had circulated among
police and court employees from 2008 to 2011. One of them depicted
President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.” I gave it a YELLOW for strong
evidence, but not as strong as the 1st piece. Why? Cold call or ask for student
volunteers. And the 3rd piece of evidence was: “Also, the report says Ferguson
used its police and courts to raise money. Often, this came at the expense of
people who were poor and African-American.” I gave this a RED for weakest
evidence, and why did I do that? Cold call or ask for student volunteers. And the
3rd piece of evidence was:
Your GOAL for today, is to look back at the evidence you have highlighted from the
Ferguson's police and courts targeted African-Americans, report says
(1010L) article, and using the GREEN, YELLOW, RED highlighting system I just
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showed you - you are going to rate each piece of evidence as Strongest (GREEN),
Strong (YELLOW) or Weaker (RED) and in your Newsela annotation, you are going
to tell me why you rated it GREEN, YELLOW or RED. Remember your annotation
must include a “because” statement and be written in complete sentences. You
should have at least 3-5 pieces of rated evidence and annotations explaining your
ratings.
Extension: Read the second article: Police departments weigh the benefits of
using officer-cams (1080L). Find text evidence to support the claim: “Mandatory
use of police body cameras are an effective method of keeping police officers
accountable.” Highlight the text evidence in YELLOW and write an annotation
answering the question: How does the text evidence you highlighted support the
claim? Next rate, each piece of evidence using the GREEN, YELLOW, RED rating
system and complete annotations explaining why you gave each piece of evidence
its rating.
Student Practice:
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Students now open their own Newsela article through their account and revisit the
text evidence they already highlighted from the article: Ferguson's police and
courts targeted African-Americans, report says (1010L)
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Directions: Teacher Note: Share as Instructions when assigning article to class.
○ Go back and look at the text evidence you highlighted in yellow to support
the claim: “The Ferguson county police department's practices violate
the 14th amendment rights of African-American citizens and must be
changed.”
○ Now for each piece of highlighted evidence, ask yourself, “How strong is this
evidence? Does it directly support the claim? How closely does it link to the
claim?
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Give the text evidence a rating of Strongest (use GREEN highlighter),
Strong (use YELLOW highlighter) or Weakest (use RED Highlighter).
In the box next to the highlighted text, write your “because” statement
answering the question: Why did you rate this piece of text evidence
GREEN, YELLOW or RED? Reminder: this statement/statements must be
in complete sentences.
Guided Questions: Teacher Note: The Guided Questions in bold are the focus questions
for the targeted skills in this lesson of determining the strength or weakness of text evidence.
However, the unbolded questions, which are from the previous lesson, are also necessary
foundations to help students recall what constitutes “text evidence.”
● Is the evidence closely linked to the claim/issue?
● Is there strong rebuttal for the evidence?
● Does the evidence require lengthy explanation?
● Why did you highlight that piece of text as evidence?
● How do you know that it is evidence and not a claim?
● How does this piece of text evidence support the claim?
Assessment:
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Students will complete reviewing their highlighted text evidence and have at least 35 ratings and explanations in the annotations explaining why each piece of evidence
was given a particular rating.
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✓+ shows mastery: Student demonstrates a clear understanding of what
makes certain pieces of evidence stronger than others and is able to give
clear rationale for every rated piece of evidence.
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✓ shows meets goal: Student demonstrates a clear understanding of what
makes certain pieces of evidence stronger than others and is able to give a
clear rationale for at least 2 pieces of rated evidence.
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✓- shows that intervention may be necessary to help student with
understanding what makes evidence stronger/weaker in light of the claim.
Extension students: students will complete the same exercise but with the second
article. Assessment standards are the same as above.
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✓+ shows mastery: Student demonstrates a clear understanding of what
makes certain pieces of evidence stronger than others and is able to give
clear rationale for every rated piece of evidence.
○
✓ shows meets goal: Student demonstrates a clear understanding of what
makes certain pieces of evidence stronger than others and is able to give a
clear rationale for at least 2 pieces of rated evidence.
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✓- shows that intervention may be necessary to help student with
understanding what makes evidence stronger/weaker in light of the claim.
Accommodations
What scaffolds can be
included to support
learners? Can you
anticipate different
reading levels for
students?
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Reading Level adjusted to each student with IEP’s reading level based on latest
Student Progress in Newsela binder or other reading assessment & teacher
observations.
Include pre-highlighted example with annotation.
Provide the Guided Questions for today either on a handout or in annotations.
Include sentence starters in annotations for struggling scholars.
Pull homogeneous group of lowest readers who need additional intervention for
targeted in-classroom targeted instruction.
Extensions
How can you support
high level learners? Can
you anticipate reading
levels and Writing Prompt
to challenge?
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Provide on-task focusing prompts.
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Increase reading level for scholars whose Student Progress lexiles are higher.
Students will rate a minimum of 5 pieces of evidence.
Read the second article: Police departments weigh the benefits of using officercams (1080L). Find text evidence to support the claim: “Mandatory use of police
body cameras are an effective method of keeping police officers accountable.”
Highlight the text evidence in YELLOW and write an annotation answering the
question: How does the text evidence you highlighted support the claim? Next rate,
each piece of evidence using the GREEN, YELLOW, RED rating system and
complete annotations explaining why you gave each piece of evidence its rating.