For our unit on persuasive writing, we have been playing a game called Opinion Continuum. This game involves students responding to a thesis statement, like "Students should be paid to do their homework." Their response consists of standing somewhere along a line between two signs reading "Strongly Agree" and "Strongly Disagree." Then we discuss people's arguments for why they are standing at particular points along the continuum.
So, yesterday we played this game again, and I gave the thesis statement above. As you may imagine a large portion of the class stood near the "Strongly Agree" sign with one student more towards the middle of the line. When I asked for students' arguments for their positions, I received responses like this:
"We should be paid to do our homework because it's hard work, and hard work deserves pay."
"We should be paid to do our homework because we deserve credit for our work just like other people who have jobs."
"We should not be paid to do our homework because we will get paid later after we get out of school."
I enjoyed these responses for two main reasons: they all came so naturally and they consisted of the basic parts of persuasion: thesis statement, argument and evidence. After more time exploring persuasion, I have a feeling that these students will be experts, and woe the person who becomes the target of their efforts.
We didn't pay our kids (including Mr V) to do their homework. It's part of going to school. I didn't get paid when I went to college, I had to pay them, a lot.
ReplyDeleteI think students should be paid because we do hard work,listen,do homework and even do extra work so we should get paid because teachers get paid just for teaching us and teachers do not do alot of wwork and us students do at least 5 plusent more work..¿
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