Should a School be Named After Thomas Jefferson?

Today, I started a new coaching cycle with Michael K.  I am super excited about this as Social Studies is not my area of expertise and I have already learned so much from a days worth of planning.

The 8th grade SS unit's big performance event is being able to argue a position by taking a claim, use  evidence and back up the evidence, and then present the counter claim and a response to that counter claim.

To get the kids started, we are pulling some relevance into the lesson by having student work on the claim using two articles (article #1 and article #2) about teen driving.

As we worked through the lesson, we made sure to structure the lesson so all students had access points.  The topic was split into 3 parts about Thomas Jefferson (common man, presidency, moral character) where students will take either side (which will be assigned) and work through the readings we have found to be able to support a claim of whether or not Thomas Jefferson should have a school named after him.  Students will practice using an organizer to cite evidence to back their claim and continue with a counter claim and response.  This will lead up to each group taking a position and then arguing with the other 8th grade SS class on if a school should be named after good ol' Tom.

I am really excited to see how the structure of this will play out!  I look forward to stepping outside my comfort zone of math and seeing how I can use the structure of this to help students with their thinking in math class!