Help Your Students Remember How to Support Their Claims When Writing

Do your middle-school students struggle to support their claims as much as mine do? My students have no shortage of claims to make when they write their essays, but support is like a foreign word to them.

I came up with this catchy acronym to help them remember what they can use as support in their writing:

B.A.G.E.L.S.!

B - Background information

A - Analogies

G - Groundbreaking experiments

E - Expert opinions

L - Logical reasoning

S - Statistics and facts

For example, if my students are writing about the positive effect of video games on teenagers, they might give the reason video games were originally invented (background information), a child psychologist’s assurance that video games help kids learn how to overcome obstacles (expert opinion), or how video games can help kids learn perseverance (logical reasoning). For more specific examples, check out these B.A.G.E.L.S. posters!