Throughout the lessons, a student leader asks a series of questions that are sequences to highlight different aspects of the texts. At this starting point of the discussion, an introductory question is asked to orient students to the competing claims and evidence throughout the texts. 

Students use texts that are appropriately complex for 7th grade and provide useful information for studying Nevada's history. These texts include, “The Ten States that Profit most from Sin,” Huffington Post, 2011; "With Gambling in Decline, a Faded Reno Tries to Reinvent Itself,” New York Times, 2012; “10 States that Profit Most from Sin,” Huffington Post, 2014; and “Nevada Best List,” Reno Gazette Journal, 2014.

The lesson is student-led throughout as students pose questions, make arguments, and use various texts as evidence. In this exchange, students provide a variety of text-based evidence to support the idea that Nevada has multiple sources of tourism-based revenue. 

The students consistently provide evidence from various texts to show their understanding of the competing ideas over income sources for the state of Nevada. In this part of the discussion,  students introduce competing claims, provide supporting text evidence, and give various reasons connecting their cited evidence and stated claim. 

The teacher and, even more importantly, the students regularly expect evidence and precision during the discussion. In this exchange, one student is asked by another for the source of  evidence used and the teacher further prompts the same student to provide a reason to connect his evidence to the claim. 

Students and teacher keep all students engaged throughout the lesson. Here, a student who has yet to participate in the discussion is prompted by a classmate who asks, "Do you have anything to add onto this?"  When the student struggles to provide clear evidence and reasoning, she is supported through her articulation with clarifying questions and statements by both students and the teacher. 

This lesson exemplifies students encouraging reasoning and problem solving to guide classmates to delve deeper into the texts. In this exchange, a student poses the question, "Taking into consideration the circumstances, if income is our problem, do we change our economic structure or just continue to make these establishments bigger and grander?"  Other students address the question by providing competing claims that are supported with a variety of text-based evidence and reasoning. 

The structure of the discussion allows students to attend to the sentences within the text and any confusions they may have. In this part, a students says she is unclear about the meaning of a sentence and is provided clarification by anther student. 

Students consistently support one another to regularly participate in the discussion. Here, one student is invited by another to contribute an answer to the question currently under discussion.  

The entire lesson is spent discussing a variety of texts on a single topic. In this exchange, students are discussing the merits of different arguments and using evidence from the text to support their assertions. 

The discussion task supports students to attend to and analyze various ideas in the texts. At this point in the lesson, students are using evidence from the same set of texts to support competing claims.  

The power of effective discussion is illuminated here:  students are asked what argument they agree with most and  document what best convinced them.