Advanced Synthesis Practice and Assessment Pieces for On-Demand Practice

I found two articles in a magazine we have laying around the house that directly relates to the same topics/themes of Outliers (it is titled Scientific American Mind--it is scholarly).  I was reading the On-Demand practice prompt for argument, and I think one article can work as practice, and the other can work as the test.  I think we can practice teaching them how to synthesize information from both the book and the article.  The On-Demand test will only provide them one relatively easy passage.  We will be bumping up the difficulty level beyond the test which will hopefully enable better results on the real On-Demand test.  The articles differ in the exact argument they are presenting, but a lot of the information is similar to the book.  I think it would be a good exercise to teach them how to weed through both the article and book to provide a well informed argument on a position.  I think our argument we ask them to write will have to deal with what are the factors that create extreme success; i.e. opportunity/culture/socio-economic position vs. innate ability, or a mix of both.  For On-Demand it tells them what side to take, so I think we should do that also.  This choice in argument would not focus on the use of anecdote, so we would just need to completely change the prompt.  I will show you the articles, and we will discuss it.  I will get my husband to scan the, so I can email them to you this weekend. 

P.S.  I know you already know this stuff about On-Demand, so I am spitting out what I know, so you can correct any of my misconceptions.