TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY PROJECTSaturday Seminar

October 5, 2013

Please pick up a playing card.

Evidence & Reasoning• Evidence is ALWAYS evidence for something! Reasoning

gives us that answer!

• Example Statistic: 74% of high school students read at a minimum of an 8th grade level.

American schools are failing! According to a new national study, 26%, or, in

other words, 1 in every 4 high school students cannot read at a 9th grade level. If 1 in 4 people in the country had a disease, we would call it an

epidemic of mass proportions!

In a recent study of U.S. students’ reading, the U.S. was given a B

average. 74% of high school students reads at or above an 8th grade level,

the level necessary to read most newspapers and popular fiction texts.

The study factored in the nearly 10% of students who have learning disabilities or are learning a second language to

come to the average grade of “B.”

Assumptions Behind “Ranking Activity”

• Students are learning to better find “evidence” in text to support specific questions we ask. But they are still struggling with finding evidence to support their claims in writing.

• Students can find evidence in the text, but the sometimes struggle with finding the MOST APPROPRIATE evidence for their arguments.

• Talking through evidence can help us to a) determine if it is valid, and 2) work through the reasoning that helps make the evidence truly support the claim.

Claim & Evidence• Open-ended claim: The Union’s emphasis on the

immorality of slavery and the slave trade had major international repercussions.

• Possible pieces of evidence:• Please take five minutes to read these quotes from pages 120-125.

• If you finish early, begin taking notes in the second column about

the meaning of these quotes (in your own words).

Possible Evidence What is the text saying in your own words?

Ranking 1-8(1=best)

Write out the reasoning to demonstrate why this piece of evidence supports the claim.

1. You individually read this section of text previously.

2. I chose varying levels of evidence from the section.

3. Some choices are great evidence but don’t necessarily jump out.

4. Another option: students each bring a piece of evidence to their groups for this section.

1. What are we doing in this section?

2. Why is this an important step before choosing evidence to use?

3. For what types of prewriting might this be helpful?

1. Why would you want students to rank all of the evidence rather than just choose the top three pieces?

1. Why is “reasoning” the very last thing to do in this process?

2. How might this graphic organizer be used when it’s complete?

How can the “Questions to Consider” on the final page help students with these final two steps?

Think About

Ways to Implement Ranking Activity

Academic Vocabulary Book• Building Academic Vocabulary: Essential Practices for

Content Classrooms• By Jeff Zwiers• ISBN#978-0-7879-8761-9