Institute for Learning
Modern Issues About Food (Grades 7-8)
Modern Issues About Food (Grades 7-8)
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- Four informational texts
- 4-6 weeks instruction
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Explanation writing
What is this unit about?
A primary focus of this unit is learning how to comprehend and analyze arguments. Through engaging in this unit, students learn how to analyze professional writers’ arguments by focusing on the claims they make; how they support those claims with relevant, credible, and sufficient evidence; and how they structure their argument so that the major sections contribute to the development of their argument. Students also learn about what makes arguments compelling and use that knowledge to analyze several published arguments.
This unit is also about modern issues regarding the food industry and what we should eat. Through the course of this unit, students deepen their understanding of a variety of issues concerning food by reading, writing, and talking about the ideas that are being debated in the texts that students read.
Finally, this unit is about writing effective essays to explain the significant ideas of others and to explain students’ own analyses of texts. In both cases, the focus is on explanations that are clear and coherent and supported with relevant, credible, and sufficient textual evidence.
In this unit, students read, write about, and discuss four texts to deepen their understanding of the following overarching questions:
- What are these authors’ concerns about what we should eat? How are their arguments similar? How are they different?
- How compelling are the authors’ arguments in these texts? What makes them compelling?
- What are the characteristics of an effective explanatory essay?
What content will students learn?
Students will expand their knowledge base about:
- modern issues and arguments about food.
- how authors use claims and evidence to develop and support their arguments.
- what it means for evidence to be relevant, credible, and sufficient.
- how authors structure their arguments so that major sections contribute to the development of their argument.
- characteristics of a compelling argument.
- characteristics of effective explanatory essays.


