You can claim that soda rots people's teeth or that dinosaurs were actually birds, but your claim will not stand up if it is not backed by evidence. A handout from UNC Writing Center, the seventh in the Writing the Paper series of 24, helps writers understand the importance of including evidence to support an argument. The handout also includes information on how to find evidence and how to incorporate it into a paper.

Concepts

secondary sources, primary sources, supporting evidence, evidence, arguments, argumentative writing

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Come up with a claim and a list of evidence and have learners determine which evidence best fits the claim
• Provide a claim and a piece of evidence and practice incorporating the evidence into the paper in different ways, such as quoting and paraphrasing

Classroom Considerations

• Use CTRL + P to get a printable version of the handout as the page does not contain a designated print button

Pros

• Provides links to additional handouts to answer key questions related to the topic
• Prepares scholars for college-level writing

Cons

• Feels very text heavy with lots of paragraphs and few bullet points or other text features to break up the information

Common Core

W.9-10.1.a W.9-10.1.b W.9-10.8 W.11-12.1.a W.11-12.1.b W.11-12.8