Students will enter the project by experiencing how rules and assigned roles shape belonging, comparing Jonas's community to historical societies through images and text, and hearing real-world perspectives on intellectual freedom before drafting an initial evidence-based position they will test in later phases.

Students will take an early position on whether communities should control what young people can read, test that position against competing viewpoints, and build a one-page working argument they can strengthen with later research.

Students will gather, evaluate, and organize evidence about intellectual freedom and censorship by reading across data, testimony, literary excerpts, and historical examples. They will test their working claims against credible counterevidence, revise their evidence logs through peer critique, and complete a graded source portfolio that prepares them to draft a stronger argument.

Students will organize their research and literary evidence into a coherent argumentative essay by building claims, subclaims, warrants, counterclaims, and rebuttals. They will map how each source supports or complicates their position, draft key sections of the essay, exchange targeted peer critique, and revise toward a strong evidence-based structure for the final symposium essay.

Students will strengthen their argumentative essays and symposium materials through critique, targeted revision, and rehearsal so they can defend an evidence-based position about book banning with clear claims, credible sources, fair counterclaims, and polished speaking.

Students will finalize and publicly present their evidence-based positions on book banning, use historical and literary comparisons to answer audience questions, and reflect on how their argument, collaboration, and civic voice developed across the project.