Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Argument Worksheet Extra Credit

For this assignment each student may earn 15 extra credit points for each worksheet turned in. You may complete as many worksheets as you would like to before March 11th. All worksheets will be graded for correctness and completion.

To complete this assignment you must find articles that present an argument from the media center database. Below are the instructions to access the database:

Go to http://galesites.com/portal/broward/

If you are trying to access this database from home, you will be asked to enter a password. The password is: brow_log

A new tab/window will open entitled "Broward County Public Schools." Choose "High School" from the tabs below...


...then select "Taravella J.P. High School" from the list of schools:


On the next screen, scroll down until you see the icon that says "Opposing Viewpoints." Click on "Opposing Viewpoints":


This will take you to a screen with many Topics/Subjects that you can use for your assignment:


If you find a category that is interesting to you, but you do not see a topic that is interesting, you may click "View All" to see more topics. For example, if "Science, Technology, and Ethics" is interesting to you, and you would like to see more topics, click "View All" and you will see all of the topics below:


Once you select a Topic, you should find two articles from either "Featured Viewpoints" or "Viewpoints that are on opposite sides of a debate. For example, if you select "Cloning" from the list above, then you will go to the screen below. Under "Featured Viewpoints" you may choose "The United States Should Ban Reproductive Cloning..." for the first article, and "The United States Should Not Ban Human Cloning" for the second article.

When you click on an article, the article title will be at the top of the page. Using the example above, "Article #2 Title" would be  "The United States Should Not Ban Human Cloning":


To find the source, scroll to the bottom of the article and find the "Source Citation." Include the name of the author, the name of the article, and the website you received the information from (ie. Gale Cengage Learning, Opposing Viewpoints). Again, using the example above the "Source" would be:

Foley, Elizabeth Price. "The United States Should Not Ban Human Cloning." Gale Cengage Learning, Opposing Viewpoints




Read the argument and determine what the author is trying to convince readers to believe. This is the "Claim/Argument." Then provide to examples of "Textual Evidence." Finally, summarize the article. This should be done for both articles that should be opposing views of the same topic.

Lastly, you should leave a rebuttal for one statement in the article. For this rebuttal, I want you to analyze one claim that you think is not valid, and tell me why you feel it is not valid. For example, "In article one the author states....I feel this is not vaild because....(not relevant, insufficient, false statement, fallacious reasoning, flaw in logic).


Each section is worth 5 points and must be done correctly if you wish to receive all the points.