Middle School Students Learn Real World Strategies

Newtown Middle School students from Karen Kirch’s language arts class received some real life lessons when Gary Silveira, an attorney and father of seventh grader Emily, visited the class on February 28 to talk to the students about education law.

The seventh graders have been working on writing concise, convincing arguments as part of their preparation for the writing assessment portion of the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Mr Silveira came to participate in an activity that is part of a culmination of the unit.

The class was divided into four groups and each was given an argumentative question or scenario. The students were allowed 15 minutes to create a thesis and support for their argument; then had five minutes to argue their case with Mr Silveira playing the role of the judge.

Mr Silveira scored each group based on clarity, logic, and specific details presented in the arguments. He then critiqued each group’s work and chose a winning argument in each class.

The attorney was impressed with the students’ abilities to work under pressure and said the experience was not unlike the real world where some days in court he is given only five or six minutes to argue a complicated case before a judge. He stressed the need to pick each and every word carefully.

Mrs Kirch said, “The students really enjoyed the concrete application of concepts being taught in school, something they often feel do not apply to real life.”