Supporting Student Argumentation in English Language Arts and History/Social Studies

College- and Career-Ready standards emphasize the importance of speaking, listening, and engaging in argumentation as a means FOR learning and as a valuable goal OF learning. Starting March 20, Drs. Sara Rutherford-Quach, Jeff Zwiers and Erika Johnson at Stanford Graduate School of Education will offer an online professional development course that focuses on student argumentation, Supporting Student Argumentation in English Language Arts and Social Studies. The overall purpose of this course is to help teachers prepare students, and particularly language learners, to clearly communicate well-structured oral and written arguments about content-area concepts and topics.

This course consists of five online sessions, which will be released in succession. Each session includes expert video screencasts, classroom video clips, readings and resources, and assignments that will prompt participants to strengthen the curricular foundations of communication.

This argumentation course is based on a previous course offered by Rutherford-Quach and professors Karen Thompson and Kenji Hakuta. The current course has been revised and augmented based on participant feedback and to reflect the content-area specializations. The instructors are associated with the Understanding Language Initiative, which focuses on language, learning, and equity issues across a range of educational settings. The Understanding Language teaching team has been designing and offering online professional development courses for four years. Thousands of educators have participated in these professional development courses.