Evaluating Thesis Statements

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This activity helps students understand the role language plays in communicating specific and complex ideas in a thesis statement.  The approach invites active collaboration, and the anonymity helps students remain focused on the cognitive task without worrying about hurting a classmate’s feelings when criticizing and revising their work.

Preparation

  • Choose a question (or passage) to use for the activity that meets the standards or learning outcomes for the unit.  For inspiration, teachers can consult past exam questions and papers.
  • Decide what materials you need for the task (e.g., note cards, slips of paper, posting area, Jamboard, etc.)

Process

  1. Ask students to write a thesis statement in response to the prescribed question (or passage) on a single note card.  They should not put their names on the note card.
  2. Collect all the note cards.
  3. Place students in groups of 3. 
  4. Randomly distribute 3 thesis statements to each group, trying to vary the length and complexity of the thesis statements in the distribution.
  5. Ask each group to rank their 3 thesis statements on a vertical spectrum from “overgeneralized” to “insightful”.
  6. Then, instruct the groups to re-write the three thesis statements on new note cards.  When rewriting the thesis statement, they should focus on:
    • Using more specific language to communicate abstract ideas.
    • Using complex sentence structures to accurately communicate the relationships between the ideas and aspects presented in the thesis statement.
    • Note: It there is repetition in the thesis statements, it is okay if students transform two thesis statements into one thesis statement.  This means they may end up with 2 rewritten statements instead of 3.
  7. When finished, ask students to join with another group, forming a group of six. 
  8. The group of six should collect their six (or so) note cards in one pile and pass them onto the next group.
  9. The groups of six then evaluated their new stack of cards, ranking them on a vertical spectrum from “overgeneralized” to “insightful”.
  10. The group can then post their ranked thesis statements on a cork board or other display area in the classroom. 
  11. Give students time to do a gallery walk to read the revised thesis statements and consider the rankings.
  12. Ask students to reflect in their portfolios:  What did you learn about thesis statements from this activity?  How might this new understanding change your process and approach to writing thesis statements?
  13. Before the next class, the teacher holistically evaluates the thesis statements and the rankings, deciding on 3-5 important points of feedback to share with the class.

Variations

  • If teachers have more than one section of the same class, one class can complete the activity the other class’ thesis statements. 
  • To do this activity online, teachers can create breakout groups and use Jamboard.  Teachers may need to collect the thesis statements in advance (using Google forms or another method) so they can digitally distribute them to groups of students.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash