• 8th-grade ELA students used Snorkl to practice the reasoning for their argumentative essays.
• Students used Snorkl’s speaking feature to articulate their reasoning and receive instant feedback.
• This iterative practice led to better student-teacher conversations and stronger final written paragraphs.

Helping students master argumentative writing can be a significant challenge. Educators often observe that students can find a claim and gather evidence, but struggle with the reasoning. Developing strong reasoning, the bridge that connects the evidence back to the main claim, requires practice. I recently had a wonderful opportunity to co-teach an 8th grade English Language Arts lesson that used Snorkl to tackle this exact step in a new way. The students were working on argumentative essays about whether the United States should have been involved in Vietnam.

The students came prepared with their claims and their researched evidence. Our goal as educators was to help them develop and refine their reasoning. We designed an activity using Snorkl to facilitate this process. We wanted students to articulate their thoughts before finalizing them in writing.

In the activity, students first typed their claim and their supporting evidence or details directly into Snorkl. Next, they used the platform’s speaking feature. This required them to verbally explain how their evidence proved their claim. This step of articulating the reasoning out loud is often a powerful, clarifying process.

After students finished speaking, Snorkl provided immediate feedback. This analysis helped students identify if their reasoning was strong and if it logically matched their claim and evidence. This feedback loop did more than just help the individual student. It transformed the classroom conversations. When students needed assistance, they could approach the teacher with specific questions based on the feedback they received. This led to much more robust and focused discussions.

The goal we set for students was to achieve a score of 4 out of 4 from Snorkl before moving on. Crucially, they had unlimited attempts. This structure reinforced a vital lesson that learning is a process of mistakes and iteration, not a single one-off event. The classroom atmosphere shifted. It was alive with productive noise. We heard organic conversations spring up as students began supporting each other, discussing their feedback and refining their ideas.

Once a student achieved that 4/4 score, they had validated their reasoning. They were then ready for the final step of writing out their complete body paragraph, confidently weaving together their claim, evidence, and their well-practiced reasoning. It was a fantastic example of using technology to build student confidence and bridge the gap between thinking and writing.

This blog post was drafted with the help of Google Gemini to help organize and flesh out my thoughts and ideas regarding the use of Snorkl to provide timely student feedback on writing in an 8th grade ELA class. I also used NotebookLM to generate a brief audio overview, perfect for those who want to listen and learn on the go.

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