Misinterpretation of the template
In this section, I have distinguished misinterpretation of the template from failure to use the template. If a student has written content with a clear reference to the structure of the template but their organization or interpretation of the template is incorrect, I consider it a misinterpretation. One form of misinterpretation surfaced in Ariel’s final essay, which I saw emerging in other students’ writing as well: a misunderstanding of the body paragraph template, breaking the evidence and warrant sentence into two sentences at the word “because”:
Also, the fact that the young woman takes her little time to get to her destination to “make sure the handsome gentlemen would win his wager” which shows that she desires freedom. Because the girl taking her little time to get to her grandmother house to give the “gentlemen …his wager” allows her to explore things that she wasn’t able to do due to others being with her. (Artifact #7.1)
Mr. Ford's template uses the color yellow to represent the evidence in context, purple to show the connection of the evidence to the topic sentence claim, and green to represent the warrant, which is the analysis of the evidence and how it supports the claim. To help students make sure they completed each part of the assignment, I broke down the template for them in a graphic organizer with boxes to write in for each section. I broke this evidence/warrant sentence into two boxes, despite the fact that it should be completed as a single sentence (even though the length is quite awkward). I identified the connection of the two phrases by including ellipses at the end of the evidence formula and the beginning of the warrant formula to show they were continuations of each other. As I saw confusion emerging in student writing, I even addressed this issue in the PowerPoint as students finished drafting their essays. The idea of the sentence is to explain how the words of the quote specifically support the paragraph’s claim. Thus Ariel’s confusion on this point was not unique, but it does suggest that she does not understand how to structure the warrant with the template . Alternately, it might suggest that the student does not understand the text, but in Ariel's case, her analysis of Carter's story in other assignments was insightful and on point, so in this case the issue appears to be with the template itself.
Further confusion observed regularly throughout the year involves contextualizing and integrating evidence. Mr. Ford worked on this in a number of lessons earlier in the year, and I revisited it while lead teaching as well, but many students struggled to introduce and integrate quotations into their writing.
Interestingly, in a pre-writing reflection, Ariel wrote that her biggest challenge in writing essays has been "how to integrate a quote" (Artifact #8). Yet the warrant shown above from her essay demonstrates one of the better integrated quotes to be found in the essays written for this assignment. She locates the quote in the narrative, though after the quote the syntax of the following phrase does not fit the first half of the sentence ("which" must be removed). More representative of student issues contextualizing evidence is Kiana's essay, in which she wrote, "The Narrator desire is freedom and something that she want to have but “Her father might forbid her, if he were home” shows that her father didn’t let her do anything" (Artifact #7.3). Besides the many grammatical issues with Kiana's writing, she fails to explain the situation that led to this passage in the narrative. Below is an example from Veronica's essay, in which she makes an attempt to locate the quote in the plot of the story, but in the process she misquotes the text and misuses the template. While Red and the Hunts bet who would get to For instance, there is no period after the quote, but the next word is capitalized, implying that she had some confusion as to whether this should be one or two sentences. She also uses the word "because" twice and thus cycles back around to the character's desire for spontaneity a second time within the same sentence. This is something I saw many students do. The warrant asks them to introduce the quote, relate it to their topic sentence claim, and explain why it proves the topic sentence. My suspicion is that the warrant sentence asks them to do some much in one sentence that students become confused how to wrap it up and end up back where they began rather than analyzing the quote to the end of the sentence.
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Above: Screenshot from a lesson I taught while students wrote their essays.
Below: Screenshot from Mr. Ford's OneNote document modeling quote integration earlier in the year. WRITING BETTER WARRANTS:
We're going to merge evidence sentences and warrants! TEMPLATE 1: Complete Sentence ______[Complete sentence, including quote]____, which shows/reveals/indicates that… EXAMPLE: The husband repeatedly ignores the wife and "[goes] on reading," which shows/reveals/indicates that... TEMPLATE 2: POSSESSIVE The [possessive noun] ______[include quote]______ shows/reveals/indicates that… EXAMPLE: The wife's repeated insistence that she "[wants]" so many things shows/reveals/indicates that... TEMPLATE 3: THE FACT THAT The fact that _____________[include quote]_____________ shows/reveals/indicates that… EXAMPLE: The fact that the wife wants to look less like a "boy" with her short hair shows/reveals/indicates that… |
Body paragraph 2, Rae's feminist perspective essay (Artifact #7.10)
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This issue with the warrant is taken to the extreme in Rae's essay, where her entire body paragraph after the topic sentence is written in one sentence (right). She keeps this sentence going by connecting evidence and analysis with "shows," "because," "proves," "reveals," etc., never coming to an end of her thought until she has finished the paragraph. In this process, she adheres to the spirit of the template's requirements yet seems to have little perspective on the readability of her writing.
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I wonder if further preparation analyzing the evidence and crafting an argument might have helped students better understand their claim before using the template and thus circumvent some of these issues. I attempted to prevent this issue by having students engage in literature circles to develop a deeper understanding of the text before beginning their essays. Further, I created an outline as a graphic organizer, including sections where students chose quotes, paraphrased the quotes in their own words, and explained how these quotes proved the topic sentence (Feminist Perspective Essay Assignment) . However, only a few students completed the outline before writing the essay with the template. Kiana, a student with a documented learning disability and IEP, is one of the students I had in mind when I created such an organized process for writing the essay. Kiana completely wrote her outline and drafted her essay in the paragraph templates, yet she became confused at the end of the drafting process and only turned in a single paragraph for her final work, earning a 37/200 as her grade on the assignment. It is difficult for me to explain why her writing appears so unrefined and her argument seems undeveloped after she worked on it in these stages, and I'm at further loss to explain why she did not turn in her finished work despite attempts to discuss this with her. Troublingly, this example of extensive drafting leading up to an unfinished or unrefined product was common occurrence rather than an exception in both of my classroom placements.