Your learning journey
About this course
No one wakes up and runs 26.2 miles without training. Somehow we instinctively understand that running a marathon requires disciplined practice and preparation, and yet we hand a student a rubric for an argumentative essay or project and expect a polished argument to just… appear.
Building Evidence-Based Arguments is a course built around the truth that developing well-reasoned arguments requires cognitive effort and training . Learning to craft an argument doesn’t happen in one day by jumping across a finish line. It requires laps. Students need to circle the track of claim, evidence, and reasoning over and over in a hundred low-stakes ways before they’re ready for the marathon of a full essay or a formal debate.
We start in Unit 1 by defining what counts as “argument” in the first place (spoiler: it’s basically everything you already teach), then we’ll spend Units 2 through 5 building our argumentative muscles — claims and counterclaims, gathering and evaluating evidence, organizing it into something that actually holds up. By Unit 6, you’ll have a toolkit for the practice of argumentative writing that teaches students to circle back through everything they’ve learned , lap after lap, until claim and evidence and reasoning finally come together.
Here are the stops you’ll make along your journey as a learner:
- The importance of well-reasoned, evidence-based arguments in our world
- Engage with the argument cycle – a different way to think about building an argument
- Learn strategies to help students think argumentatively and develop claims, counterclaims, and rebuttals
- Pick up tools for gathering and evaluating evidence
- Learn strategies for organizing evidence so it is ready to use.
- Help students practice these skills for mastery and transfer.
This course is available at no cost to educators through the We the Teachers initiative, made possible by a U.S. Department of Education grant.
Details
Includes
Shareable PD Certificate
Aligned With
Assessment Types
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What you’ll learn
Master Core Concepts
- Define evidence-based argumentation with a focus on expansive, everyday classroom applications.
- Explore the Argument Cycle and its three essential elements: claim, evidence, and reasoning.
Develop Skills
- Evaluate practical protocols for claim-finding, source evaluation, and visual evidence sorting.
- Guide students through claims, counterclaims, rebuttals, and pre-draft organization
Apply Your Skills in Context
- Design classroom activities built around low-stakes instructional “laps” and micro-projects to foster skill transfer.
- Use learning progressions to formatively track student growth and guide targeted re-teaching.
Demonstrate Your Learning
- Complete a Narrative Assessment reflecting on how you will implement and evaluate a chosen strategy in your own classroom.
- Leverage a diverse range of supplementary resources.
Skills you’ll gain
Strategies & frameworks you’ll encounter
Ready to transform your classroom conversations?
Join educators building the skills to facilitate meaningful, respectful dialogue with students of all ages.
Modules
In this introductory section, you will meet your instructor, Master Teacher, Rebekah O’Dell, and explore why developing evidence-based argumentation skills is vital for student growth across all disciplines. You will gain an overview of the course structure, discover how building argument skills requires low-stakes “laps” rather than an overnight sprint, and set the foundation for your learning journey.
In this module, you will define argumentation expansively and discover how everyday classroom moments—like small-group discussions and exit tickets—serve as rich opportunities for argument-building. You will analyze texts across ELA and Social Studies to identify the three universal elements of argument: claim, evidence, and reasoning.
Here, you will explore the Argument Cycle as a flexible, recursive process driven by inquiry rather than a rigid linear sequence. You will gain practical tools to help your students contextualize arguments within broader conversations and tailor their work to specific audiences and intended effects.
In this module, you will acquire actionable claim-finding strategies—such as Question-Flooding and Pattern-Puzzle-Position—to help your students formulate clear, contestable, and supportable claims. You will also master frameworks for addressing counterclaims through reasoned rebuttals and tracking student growth using formative learning progressions.
In this module, you will learn how to guide students beyond cherry-picked facts by promoting source diversity and distinguishing between primary and secondary sources across disciplines. You will examine digital and analog collection tools alongside evaluation frameworks like the CRAAP Test to critique source credibility and evidence strength.
In this module, you will reframe evidence organization as an essential pre-draft thinking task that feeds idea development rather than a final editing step. You will learn physical and visual protocols to help your students establish structural logic before drafting.
In this final module, you will synthesize all course skills by exploring low-stakes instructional “laps” and micro-projects that allow students to practice and integrate complete arguments for skill transfer. You will conclude the course by writing a reflective Narrative Assessment detailing how you will implement and evaluate a selected strategy in your own teaching context.
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A microcourse is a short, focused learning experience designed to be completed in manageable segments — so you can fit professional development into your actual schedule, not just your PD days.
Course length varies, but most microcourses are designed to be completed in five hours — and you can pause and return whenever it works for you.
All courses are developed by teachers in collaboration with William & Mary faculty researchers, museum professionals, and other experts. Courses are grounded in learning science and backed by William & Mary’s decades of leadership in civic education. Content is designed to be rigorous and immediately applicable in the classroom.
We’re always adding new courses so please visit our Learn page to view the latest release.
When you complete a lilyPD course, you’ll receive a downloadable certificate worth 5 hours of professional development, accredited by William & Mary’s School of Education.
We ensure all our courses meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This includes:
- Behind the scenes: semantic HTML, full keyboard (tab) navigation, and screen-reader compatibility.
- In the user experience: transcripts for non-text content, ALT text for images, and clear, comprehensible site navigation.
If you have concerns or suggestions for how we can improve our accessibility features, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at lilypd@wm.edu with the subject line “Accessibility.”
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