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Lesson Construction Template: People Should Drink Bottled Water

Decent Essays

ELA8 SB U6 L11 LC

Lesson Construction Template

Introduction and Objective

Imagine that a speaker states the following: People should drink tap water instead of bottled water. Bottled water is bad for the environment. In addition, bottled water isn’t necessarily a healthy alternative to tap water.

Do you believe this speaker? Would you quit drinking bottled water based on this speaker’s argument? What would it take for you to believe that bottled water is bad for the environment? What might convince you that bottled water isn’t a healthy alternative to tap water?

Today, we’re going to look at evaluating a speaker’s use of evidence.

Today's lesson objective is:
Students will delineate a speaker’s argument and specific claims …show more content…

Determine the thesis statement: As an alternative, people should drink tap water, which would reduce litter and save energy.
2. Recognize the claim: Using bottled water contributes to litter.
3. Evaluate the evidence:
➢ The speaker uses a statistic from National Geographic Kids; a statistic can be verified. In addition, National Geographic is a recognized and reputable magazine.
➢ The speaker uses a second statistic from waterproject.org; a statistic can be verified. In addition, it is .org website, meaning that the source is probably reliable.
➢ The speaker states that the Great Pacific Garbage patch consists of plastic garbage; the speaker then blames bottled water as the source for most of this garbage. However, there is no evidence to support this statement. There’s a lot of other plastic waste besides bottled water.
➢ The speaker quotes ecowatch.com, stating that the floating mass is twice the size of Texas with plastic pieces outnumbering sea life six to one. Since it is a .com website, the source is questionable; however, the information presented could easily be verified by searching another source.
4. Conclusion: Though we identified one statement that is questionable, the speaker does use compelling evidence to support the claim that bottled water contributes to

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