Argument, Evidence, Analysis Paragraph

     One of the main goals of our unit was to teach the skills that historians use everyday. We identified argument, evidence, and analysis to be key parts of any historians tool belt. We highlighted theses skills in the paragraph we asked students to write above. Students received three newspaper excerpts and had to construct an argument centered around the question: What ignited the Zoot Suit Riots? Students had to create their own argument for who was to blame, support that claim with evidence from the secondary sources provided, and then analyze how the sources either proved or disproved their argument.

     Students also received feedback directly aligned to the skills that we were trying to teach. I highlighted each part of the rubric so that students could clearly see what they scored, and then I gave them direct feedback about where they succeeded and how they could improve. I made sure to give concrete examples of how students could improve, and often wrote that they could speak to me for one on one advice for how they could improve specific skills.

     This feedback was also given with the summative project in mind. Since we had already established that a key part of the Adobe Spark projects would be how students backed up a clear claim with strong evidence and analysis, students' feedback was also provided so that they could assess their strengths and figure out how to improve on their next big project.