Argue Your Point! Argumentative Writing Handouts and Task Cards Middle School

In this book, you will find twenty argumentative writing exercises. Each exercise presents an argumentative prompt accompanied by three questions or tasks which will generate critical thinking skills, discussion, and debate. Some of the topics require the students to acknowledge and distinguish a claim from alternate or opposing claims. Some questions require students to choose relevant and sufficient evidence to support a claim, and others require students to develop their own claims with reasons and evidence to support them.
**New! Now also includes Argue Your Point Task Cards. The task cards include the same information as the handouts but in a different format. These cards will be perfect for individual use or to use in literary centers!

Thinking of valid reasons and finding sufficient evidence are two of the greatest challenges for middle school students when developing arguments. It is crucial that we as teachers provide ample time discussing how to develop effective arguments, but as all English language arts teachers know, we do not have a ton of time! These short exercises provide a way to tackle many argumentative topics and teach students the art of arguing in an essay.

You may choose to use these exercises as springboards for writing assignments, challenging your students to organize their reasons and evidence logically in an essay. Or, you may simply choose to use each task as a way to discuss and talk through how to argue a topic with valid reasons. These handouts can be used as classwork or homework. They could even be used as the preface for class debates. With twenty of these handouts, you can do one a week for an entire semester!