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Educator Resources

​GAINING UNDERSTANDING THROUGH DISCUSSION AND DEBATE

Also: Watch how New York City Schools used Word Generation for Debate Tournaments!

RUBRICS designed to support discussion, debate, and argumentative writing in the classroom

Discussion Rubric

Debate Rubric

Argumentative Writing Rubric

​CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES to develop academic discussion and debate

Teachers frequently comment that they need additional activities that contribute to students' readiness for academic discussion and debate in the classroom. Below are eight that can be used with Word Generation or any debatable topic that arises in the classroom.

  • Opinion Continuum

  • Opposite Perspectives

  • Please Elaborate

  • Pro and Con

  • Rating Reasons

  • Survey Your Peers

  • Taking it Up a Level

  • Weighing the Evidence

The WordGen TeamDevelopment of Word Generation was led by Catherine Snow (Harvard University) through a SERP collaboration with the Boston Public Schools and other districts in Massachusetts and Maryland. Support for Word Generation was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Leon Lowenstein Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education through grant numbers R305A090555 and R305F100026. The information provided does not represent views of the funders.
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Word Generation by SERP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.