Michael W. Smith

In this brief but comprehensive guide to teaching argument writing, teachers will learn why teaching argument is important, the elements of formal argument, and how to get started with their own students in sections that include planning, assessing, and troubleshooting. Also provided: a semantic differential scale, scenario, and language frames to help jumpstart your first lesson.

"General reading strategies and teacher-developed questions will only take our students so far—with our approach, students gain astounding independence because they engage directly with the nonfiction author, and with how that author used specific details (moves) and structures to communicate meanings and effects." —Wilhelm and Smith. All nonfiction is a conversation between the writer and the reader, an invitation to agree or disagree with compelling and often provocative ideas about some aspect of the world we live in. At the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to decide if the argument is sound. With Diving Deep Into Nonfiction, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith deliver a revolutionary teaching framework that helps students read well by noticing the rules and conventions of this dynamic exchange. The classroom-tested lessons include engaging short excerpts and teach students to be powerful readers who know both how authors signal what’s worth noticing in a text and how readers connect and make meaning of what they have noticed. No matter what they are reading, students learn to be on high alert, and highly curious about how texts work and what they mean, as they learn to notice direct statements of principle, calls to attention, ruptures, and readers’ rules of notice: Notice the topics and the textual conversation: Who is speaking and how might he or she be responding to another’s ideas? What is the idea that gives "heat" to this text? Notice key details: What attracts my attention? How does the author signal both direct and implicit statements of meaning? How does the author use the unexpected? How can I interpret patterns of key details to see overall meanings? Notice varied nonfiction genres: What are the essential features of this kind of text? How does the author employ them? What effects are they designed to have on the reader? Notice text structure: How does the author structure the text to connect details and ideas? What patterns of thought does the author use along the way? With Diving Deep Into Nonfiction, Wilhelm and Smith upend current practices, and it’s high time. Once your students engage with these lessons, you’ll never go back to the same old tired approach— and reading across content areas enters a whole new era.

Better Arguments Make Better Students ― and Better Citizens The ability to make effective arguments is not only necessary in students’ academic lives, it’s a transferable skill essential to students’ future success as critical thinkers and contributing members of society. But how do we engage students and ensure they understand argument writing’s fundamental components? Michael Smith′s book Developing Writers of Argument, shows the way, with ready-to-implement lessons that make argument writing topical and relevant. Students form arguments about subjects of interest, and then reflect on the arguments’ organization, giving them reusable structural models. Complete with guidance on applying the lessons’ techniques in a unit-wide context, Developing Writers of Argument offers a practical approach for instructing in this crucial aspect of students’ development.

The problems of boys in schools, especially in reading and writing, have been the focus of statistical data, but rarely does research point out how literacy educators can combat those problems. Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm worked with a very diverse group of young men to understand how they use literacy and what conditions promote it. In this book they share what they have learned. The authors' data-driven findings explain why boys reject much of school literacy and how progressive curricula and instruction might help boys engage with literacy and all learning in more productive ways.