Prove Your Point (Using Evidence)

"No one cares what you say if you can't prove it."

This is my mantra as an English teacher. Whenever a student whines about opening a book to look for evidence to back up his point, I just shrug and tell him that his words mean nothing unless they are backed up with reliable evidence.

Because despite all the propaganda, scams, and entertainment fluff in today's society, there's no substitute for a clear, well-reasoned argument backed by well-cited evidence.

It's the ultimate cross-disciplinary skill. Science, math, English, social studies—they all benefit from being able to prove their process with solid evidence. It's important for all teachers to contribute to teaching and practicing this skill. 

Identifying Textual Evidence

In addition to being a crucial skill for all learners, textual evidence is a key Common Core writing standard. Because it is such an important standard, you may find it helpful to not only model using textual evidence yourself, but to use video examples as well. There are some great videos modeling the use of textual evidence for the short story, "A Pair of Silk Stockings," and the novel, Monster.

You can use a textual evidence worksheet or teach basic annotation skills. The New York Times' Education Blog has several great resources on annotation. There are several brainstorming questions and six different styles of annotating strategies to help readers find the right method for themselves. There is also an article that discusses an annotation approach to news articles. By selecting a strategy and practicing annotation, the writing process becomes much easier because the selection of textual evidence has already happened.  

Once the evidence is found and selected, the writing process can begin.

Writing Framework

Most young writers need a structure to help them remember the process of using evidence and to thoroughly explain the evidence they used. This is why for several years I have used the ACES paragraph structure. While I am not usually one for clever acronyms or writing formulas, ACES is one that I have found to be flexible and worthwhile. Simply, ACES means:

• A: Answer the writing prompt

• C: Cite evidence with a quotation

• E: Explain your evidence

• S: Summarize or conclude

This is easily differentiated—whether it's allowing lower-level writers to paraphrase rather than quote or adding extra quotation and explanation requirements for higher-level learners.

You can also expand this into guided outlines for research papers. I have all my students complete this process for every point in their essays, so they have already thought through their thesis sentence, topic sentences, textual evidence, and reasoning before they ever start drafting. This emphasis on the planning and outlining stages reduces the amount of time spent in drafting and revising, and significantly reduces fluff in papers.

Citation and Formatting Resources

There are two schools of thought for bibliographies and citations. The first says to take advantage of websites like Easy Bib that help format different resources. The other school of thought was drilled into my brain by an anonymous professor. He strongly believed that the understanding of how to format a bibliography was a rite of passage and that allowing a website to do your work for you was the first step in man's eventual subjugation to robotic overlords. 

Either way, your writers need to be aware of the different styles out there. They need basic overviews of MLA, APA, Chicago, and (if they're feeling adventurous), Turabian. 

The Purdue Writing Lab is a great online reference, particularly if you don't want to buy a new MLA Handbook every time a committee decides that the Internet is here to stay and we should know how to cite things from it. 

You can also use a video modeling creating a citation to help your visual learners. The more your writers see the thought process behind the citations, the more likely they are to remember how to do it.