Completely Change Your Students’ Argumentative Writing: Teach Them to Close Read a Picture Book

Q: Why not use a novel my students are already assigned to read?

As we scaffold and support our students, it’s always important to consider the balance of text complexity compared to the cognitive challenge we’re asking our students.

If it’s a new skill that is difficult, lower the complexity of the text as students initiate their exposure to the skill. If the skill is familiar with repeated practice, increase the complexity of the text to further develop their reading comprehension, fluency, etc..

If your students are new to close reading or argumentative writing (or even a particular skill within these tasks), consider lowering the text complexity by using a picture book or graphic novel. If you use the “grade-level-appropriate,” department-assigned class novel, you may create an early short circuit of students’ ability to engage with thoughtful practice of this new skill.

There are too many fantastic picture books for me to name here that I know will engage adolescent readers. Jillian Heise, creator of #classroompicturebookaday, has a ton of recommendations. A few of my students’ favorites are The Frog Prince Continued, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and The Butter Battle Book.

Q: How do I craft a lesson around a picture book or graphic novel?

1. Choose a book that thematically fits with your unit’s driving question.

The first unit in my U.S. History class focuses on the Industrial Era with the driving question: “Is the U.S. still a Land of Opportunity?”

I chose Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel The Arrival because of his beautiful depiction of the universal aspects of an immigrant’s experience.

2. Break up larger books into small, manageable sections, or assign pairs to split smaller books.

The Arrival is over 100 pages, so I began by assigning 3-4 pages of the book to each student to closely read. They were assigned to write a brief argument, stating what message they believed Shaun Tan was trying to share with his readers.

3. Model how to close read images.

Discuss how to infer meaning from some of the elements and principles of the illustrator’s design, such as the artist’s use of:

• emphasis
• color
• contrast
• movement
• repetition
• space

4. Provide sentence starters to infer meaning from images.

Students in my school are already familiar with the sentence templates from Gerald Graff and Cathy Berkenstein’s book They Say, I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. Here I translated some to fit with artistic elements to strengthen the academic awesomeness of my students’ arguments.

Academic Templates for Introducing Something Implied or Assumed:

• Although Shaun Tan does not say so directly, he apparently implies that _____________ due to ______________.
• Shaun Tan  apparently assumes that ______________ based on ___________.
• The artwork suggests/hints/implies ___________ because __________.
• Based on my understanding of _____________, I have to assume _______________.
• What I know about ____________ makes me think that __________________.

5. Assign students to read the analyses of the classmates’ work on other pages and add on with one of the follow stances: “Yes, and…,” “No, because…” or “Okay…, but…“

My students visited their second set of 3-4 pages to once again close read. However, in conjunction with their own analysis, students were now arguing with the original students who were assigned those pages initially.

6. Provide sentence starters to engage with another argument.

Again, students used the sentence templates to form scholarly responses to one another’s arguments.

Adding to a Classmate’s Argument, but with a Difference:

• I agree that ____________ because my experience ________________ confirms it.
• [Student’s Name]  surely is right about ____________ because, as she may not be aware, ___________ shows that ________________.
• I agree that __________, however, I want to emphasize the importance of ____________ because it shows ___________________.
• I really liked [Student’s Name]’s point about _________. I’d add that ______________.

Yielding to a Classmate’s Argument, yet Standing Your Ground:

• I take your point, [Student’s Name], that ___________. Still, I think _______________.
• While it is true that _______________________, it does not necessarily follow that ____________.
• On the on hand, [Student’s Name] is right to say ______________. On the other hand, it is still true that ______________.

Opposing a Classmate’s Argument, based on Reasons:

• I think [Student’s Name] is mistaken because she overlooks ____________.
• I disagree with [Student’s Name]’s view that ____________ because, as it shows _____________ .

Obviously, by entering the conversation with one another, students had a deeper understanding of the text as a whole.

Q: How do I logistically facilitate this discussion?

If your students are working in pairs, they can follow a Silent Conversation protocol and leave notepaper in the pages of their book.

If students are working with a longer book, I suggest using provide color-coded sticky notes for students.

For this many mini-debates, I hosted the conversation about The Arrival on VoiceThread.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with VoiceThread, it is” a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos. [It] allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways – using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).”

Students hadn’t used this platform before but quickly became familiar with the tools. It also made it easier to facilitate the conversation across multiple class periods.

Q: How do I bring it all together?

Expand the conversation beyond your classroom by having students read other writer’s analyses of your chosen book. Often, you’ll even be able to find an article or interview with/from the author themselves.

I was fortunate with our analysis of The Arrival to include further arguments by some of my students favorite Young Adult authors:

• Shaun Tan
• Ruta Sepetys, author of Between Shades of Grey, among many other favorites.
• Gene Luen Yang, author/graphic novelist of American Born Chinese and more

Following the same multimedia format that they found in VoiceThread, students experienced through a multimodal reading:

• Tan’s ideas through video
• Sepetys’ reflection through podcast with written text
• Yang’s argument through text.

As we do with all texts, model through the gradual release instructional model, as a scaffold before they tackled an aspect of the work independently.

End by having students synthesize all of the arguments around the text.

My students did this by combining their understanding of the immigrant experience in The Arrival with modern “Land of Opportunity” arguments we read from The New York Times to write a killer argument addressing our unit’s driving question, “Is the U.S. still a ‘Land of Opportunity?”