Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

• W.6.1 - Opening A: Students review their Independent Argument Evidence note-catchers and locate the two strongest reasons to support the claim that their focus figure's accomplishments are remarkable.
• RI.6.1 - Work Time A: Students plan their independent argument essays. They identify the textual evidence they will use to support their claims.
• RI.6.3 - Work Time A: Students refer to key events presented in their sources, and how they have been elaborated upon by the authors of those sources, as they collect evidence to support their claims.
• W.6.1 - Work Time A: Students plan independent argument essays in which they support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
• W.6.4 - Work Time A: Students plan their independent argument essays to ensure that they produce clear and coherent essays whose development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• W.6.5 - Work Time A: Students develop and strengthen their writing through careful planning of their independent essays.
• W.6.9b - Work Time A: Students use textual evidence to support the claims and reasons of their independent argument essays.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

• Identify students in class who are particularly good at different aspects of the writing process; allow them to conference with their classmates to give advice on their area of expertise.
• Depending on students' previous experience, consider extending their knowledge of documentation of sources with a more formal bibliography with in-text citations rather than a simple list of titles and authors.

How It Builds on Previous Work

• Students have been analyzing a model and using their analysis to draft a collaborative argument essay. In this lesson, students use what they learned during the collaborative writing process to independently complete their evidence gathering and then plan their argument essay based on their research about their focus figure.

Support All Students

• Some students may feel nervous by the idea of writing an argument essay on their own. Remind them they have already written an argument essay in Module 3 (literary argument). Point out the similarities between the content of this essay and that of the Mary or Katherine collaborative essays. Help students recognize that much of their thinking about the essay topic has already taken place as they gathered their evidence while researching. Encourage them to shift their mental energy to differences in structure, purpose, and audience between the two types of writing tasks. The writing planner is optional for the independent essay in this module, but consider which students might benefit from its continued use for this assessment task.
• Remind students that the more they plan their essays now, the easier the Argument Essay task will be. It may be helpful for some students to have an opportunity to interact and discuss their ideas aloud before beginning to plan independently.

Assessment Guidance

• Use the Grade 6 Writing Process checklist to assess students' writing abilities in Work Time A (see the Tools Page ).
• Meet with each student during the planning time for a 1-minute conference to check for understanding.

Down the Road

• In the next two lessons, students will complete the Mid-Unit 3 Assessment, for which they independently draft their argument essays based on their research, evidence gathering, and planning.