<aside> ⌛ Estimated student time on platform: 45 minutes

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<aside> 🗣 Lesson host: Kim Strassel, The Wall Street Journal

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<aside> 3️⃣ Difficulty level: 3 (for middle school, high school and higher education)

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<aside> ✔️ Assessments: 11 total ****(7 auto-graded and 4 teacher-evaluable)

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<aside> 🗒️ Standards: This lesson has Common Core, ISTE, C3 and state-specific alignments. Find your standards in the Checkology alignments dropdown menu to learn more.

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Learning objectives:

• I can differentiate between claims supported by actual evidence and sound reasoning and those which rely on faulty or inauthentic “evidence” and logical fallacies.
• I can determine the overall strength of an argument.

Essential questions:

• What is the role of evidence in opinion and editorial writing?
• In what ways can logical fallacies mislead an audience or distort a position?

Background:

Standards-based news organizations regularly publish opinion pieces, as do independent columnists and commentators. This lesson explores the role of evidence; the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief, proposition, or argument is true or valid, in supporting claims and arguments. At the core of this lesson is a scenario (about banning cellphones in school) through which students will evaluate various claims to find those supported by evidence and those that are misleading or distorted using logical fallacies.

The ease with which people can create, publish and share opinions can be overwhelming. Most pieces of opinion journalism and opinionated social media posts are flooded with comments but very few are structured to be clear arguments with claims supported by an available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief, proposition, or argument is true or valid.

<aside> 🔙 Back to lesson home page

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Full lesson guide: Arguments and Evidence

From the field: Arguments and Evidence