Philadelphia Writing Project
Supporting Civically Engaged Argument Writing with Primary Sources
Our Approach
Teachers in our Philadelphia Writing Project network are engaging in inquiries and creating curriculum resources to support civically engaged argument writing in grades 3-12 classrooms.
The curriculum collections we are developing draw upon:
primary sources from the Library of Congress and the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) consortium;
argument writing approaches from the National Writing Project’s (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP; Arshan & Park, 2021; Friedrich et al., 2018); and
Gholdy Muhammad’s (2020, 2023) Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacies Framework.
In 2022 and 2023, we shared our works in progress in a webinar series, local summer institutes for teachers, national and local conference presentations, the TPS Teachers Network, and the NWP Teacher Studio.
What We Mean By Civic Argument Writing
Argument writing is a common topic in education discourse, curricula, and professional development. When someone talks about "argument" in education, they may be referencing specific genres of argument writing in a history class (e.g., crafting essays about the importance, impact, or causes of a historical event), a literature class (e.g., writing papers that encourage a reader to see specific themes in a novel or short story), a science class (e.g., creating explanatory models that can account for a range of related phenomena), and/or in standardized test preparation (e.g., crafting open-ended responses to assessment prompts). How does our approach to argument writing differ from these examples? We aim to support students as they participate in ongoing, contemporary conversations about what we should do and value as communities. Drawing upon NWP's C3WP approaches and stances, we believe "civic argument writing" has its place in any classroom.
Further, we believe that historical primary sources support civic argument writing about contemporary civic discussions found in news headlines. To illustrate this, we have created curriculum collections around questions like "What should a city do about ATVs and dirt bikes on city streets?" and "What should we do (if anything) about the growing amount of orbital debris circling Earth?" In these curriculum collections, we encourage students to research how rules of the road have changed over time with the proliferation of automobiles and how the Space Race shaped our national approach to space. Integrating historical texts and content knowledge then can inform current civic arguments about what we should do today about an issue in our community.
Finally, in a civic argument writing unit, students can and should create texts for audiences outside of the classroom. For example, in our curriculum resources on orbital debris or "space junk," students in a grade 5 classroom crafted letters to their senators. In our curriculum resources on monuments, memorials, and public memory, students created proposals for changing existing monuments and developing new monuments and murals. Many units call for students to draft Op-Eds for publication in local newspapers.
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Our Stances on Teaching Argument Writing
Our team of teacher consultants in Philadelphia developed the stances based on our work with NWP's C3WP resources.
Arguments are all around us.
Our communities are full of arguments—debates, discussions, and conversations about how we should live together as members of a community. As teachers, we should cultivate a culture of argument in our classrooms and support students as they civically engage beyond the classroom.
Arguments are not simply pro and con, for and against.
While civic debates are often framed as having only two sides, our approach emphasizes that many issues are complex and participants may have nuanced perspectives. As students engaged with multiple perspectives, they can figure out what others have said in a civic conversation so far (Graff & Birkenstein, 2021; Harris, 2017), build empathy (Mirra, 2018), and imagine thoughtful ways forward. As teachers, we should be hesitant to present arguments as two-sided or binary; this could lead to an us-versus-them mentality in which students defend in-group identities rather than engage in good faith efforts to find solutions to problems.
Argument writers make moves with claims and evidence.
Participants in any social activity (such as civic argument writing) develop, take up, and transform practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 2003). Our work as teachers is to help cultivate civic argument writing practices for all students. Writers who construct civic arguments make public claims that they then support with evidence. Students should try out moves that other effective communicators use in an effort to strengthen their own arguments (Graff & Birkenstein, 2021; Harris, 2017). Teachers should collaborate with colleagues to determine what kinds of moves students may need to learn more about. As students try out these moves, students may make them their own.
Our Stances on Teaching with Primary Sources
The Library of Congress describes primary sources as "the raw materials of history — original documents and objects that were created at the time under study." With this definition in mind, our team of teachers in Philadelphia developed stances on how we view primary sources for classroom learning.
Members of communities create and share texts across generations for a range of purposes and audiences. In school, we should explore with students how, why, and when those texts were created and also contribute our own texts to what are ongoing conversations.
Reading and rewriting texts (“the word”) is bound up with “reading the world” (Freire, 1983). In school, we should learn alongside students to critically examine the world and the word as we strive to make our communities more just and joyful (Muhammad, 2020; 2023).
Young people are already actively participating in ongoing, intergenerational dialogue through which they remember, reestablish, and reimagine what makes communities just and joyful (Muhammad, 2020, 2023). In school, we should recognize students' experiences, expertise, and agency outside of school.
Digital technologies have opened up opportunities to explore texts from our past that otherwise would have only been available in libraries and archives. In school, we should position students as constructors of knowledge who can learn with these texts as they engage in inquiries.
Collecting, curating, and digitizing the texts available to us was likely shaped by settler colonialism, racism, sexism, and ableism and may not fully represent the range of experiences of members of all communities and ancestors of all people. In school, we should ensure that students engage with texts created by all of our ancestors (particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color), texts that show the full range of humanity, including in resistance, joy, and self-determination.
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References
Arshan, N. L. & Park, C. J. (2021). Research brief: SRI finds positive effects of the College, Career, and Community Writer’s Program on student achievement. SRI International. https://www.sri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/C3WP-Scale-Up-Research-Brief-April-2021_Acc.pdf
Friedrich, L., Bear, R., & Fox, T. (2018). For the sake of argument: An approach to teaching evidence-based writing. American Educator, 42(1), 18-40.
Freire, P. (1983). The importance of the act of reading. Journal of Education, 165(1), 5-11.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2021). They say, I say: The moves that matter in academic writing (5th ed.). W. W. Norton.
Harris, J. (2017). Rewriting: How to do things with texts. University Press of Colorado.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Mirra, N. (2018). Educating for empathy: Literacy learning and civic engagement. Teachers College Press.
Muhammad, G. E. (2023). Unearthing joy: A guide to culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning. Scholastic.
Muhammad, G. (2021). 12 questions to ask when designing culturally and historically responsive curriculum. Association for Middle Level Education. https://www.amle.org/12-questions-to-ask-when-designing-culturally-and-historically-responsive-curriculum
Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press.
This website features resources created by educators affiliated with the Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP), supported by a Teaching with Primary Sources grant from the Library of Congress.
The following Philadelphia Writing Project teacher consultants contributed to this page: J. Ross and J. F. Smith. Additionally, teacher consultants T. Anderson and L. Lapina helped with editing this page.
Some of the resources and approaches referenced on this page were developed by the National Writing Project's (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program.
Teacher Consultants in the NWP Write Now Teacher Studio and members of the Teaching with Primary Sources Teachers Network have provided feedback on and suggestions for this page.
This page was updated 25 August 2024.