Every day, students spend time writing and analyzing writing in my classroom at the sophomore and junior levels. Writing is a difficult task, and they struggle with it. My goal is to make rhetorical writing easier for them to understand through modern texts and creative lessons.
Being in a Title 1 school, I have students that come from lower middle-class families to families living in extreme poverty.
While many of my students have adult responsibilities outside of school, they still have a desire to learn and be successful. My English classroom is a place where they can improve their skills while sharing and learning from their personal experiences. The area they need the most support in is writing. They have much to say and are eager to share their thoughtful and insightful opinions, but they struggle understanding the arguments of others and putting their own into words. Additional resources would allow them to improve their rhetoric skills.
My Project
Learning to write effective arguments is one of the hardest skills for students to master. My students can identify a piece of good writing, but they do not know specifically what makes the piece effective. More importantly, they cannot emulate those skills. As they start to develop their own opinions, they need to be able to argue their point efficiently in both written and verbal forms. Everything's an Argument is one of the best textbooks on the market for teaching the construction and analysis of arguments and claims. With dozens of modern real-world examples, it takes a difficult concept and relates it to the students clearly.
My two reference copies of Everything's an Argument is insufficient in meeting the needs of my students.
Those copies have to be shared between 25-31 students during a class period. Since it is a favorite, there is often a line waiting to use the text. This project would allow ALL of my students to reference the text to improve their writing and argument skills, helping them become college and career ready. It will also, finally, allow me to use the text in my lesson plans.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Skahill and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
