"Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof."
‘Evidence’ appears to be a buzz word in teaching. So much so that it is now used as a verb. ‘To evidence’ something is to provide proof (ocular or otherwise) that it has been done. There are many ways I could take this post; an obvious choice would be to discuss the bureaucracy that permeates a teacher’s workload. However, I feel that subject has been and is being discussed to death, so instead, I wanted to focus on the use of evidence in my students’ work and how I go about teaching them to collect it.
The GCSE mark schemes require students, at the highest level, to be able ‘to select a judicious range’ of textual detail or examples. For a long time, finding evidence was one of the simplest skills in my book. It’s information retrieval, Harold Bloom puts it pretty low on his taxonomy and actually, writing well about the quotation is far more important. However, taking a top set through these new GCSEs, I’ve come to realise that actually, their selection of quotations is not only the first step to success, but can make or break their exam response.
I have now read hundreds of exam responses, some good, some bad, some so horrific I’ve almost cried. Simply put, I’ve found that without carefully selected evidence, even tremendous points fail.
In my case, my blithe disregard of the importance of teaching students explicitly to find, not just any, evidence, but precise, ‘judicious’ carefully selected evidence has meant that my students equally believe it is the lesser skill. On the literature mark scheme, this disregard can cost up to 12 marks as it is a critical element of AO1 and whilst I’m aware that getting students to understand what a 'conceptualised’ response is, is far more complex, the more achievable of those two bullet points from AO1 will be precisely selecting judicious evidence.
With this idea in mind, I decided to write down some aims and trial these ideas with my year 8 students studying A Midsummer Night's Dream. What did I want to see when I asked students to provide 'ocular proof’?
1) Finding apt quotations: A mixture of quotations- both long sentence/ clause types and the smaller micro quotes consisting of individual words and short phrases.
2) Embedding apt quotations: Quotations embedded within sentences. No more 'a quote to show this is’.
3) Punctuating quotations appropriately: Appropriate punctuation to adapt or modify the tense or person within a quotation, e.g use of square brackets.
The final aim was put on as a long shot and targeted mainly at the very top end, those capable of doing the first two without trouble.
I came up with a number of strategies to tackle these aims.
1) Finding apt quotations:
- Quote Quests- These were framed as comprehension questions, but the answers had to be quotations. I would design a set of perhaps 6-8 questions. The answers began as full sentence quotes, continued to shorter phrases and eventually to individual words. I offered reward points for the fastest pair who matched my responses EXACTLY.
Initially, I discovered that the students were fairly lackadaisical about being precise, but as they discovered how very stringent I was when checking their answers and how frequently a 'winning pair’ had to re-enter the fray due to imprecision, they became better. Expected more of themselves, really enjoyed the competition element and most importantly, understood how accurate they needed to be. In English, due to the whole wobbly world of interpretation that we try to teach students to navigate, having clear cut right and wrong answers actually reassured many students.
2) Embedding apt quotations:
- Comprehension Questions- These worked because I made it clear that I wasn’t looking for analysis and I used the 5 Ws as question stems.
I modelled examples in response to questions such as: What is Lysander’s plan after Theseus’ decree? Answer: Lysander’s plan after Theseus’ decree is to run away, he tells Hermia of his “widowed aunt” who “hath no child” and lives a “remote seven leagues” from Athens. He believes the “sharp Athenian law cannot pursue” them there.
By giving my students the opportunity, the modelled examples and the encouragement to craft responses where they embedded evidence ever more precisely, but in a low stakes way, they learnt the effectiveness of embedding evidence when they wrote analytical pieces too. It also had a side benefit in that it meant the students were quoting more heavily and where previously I had students attempting to write entire paragraphs of analysis on one tiny ill-chosen phrase, now they were littering their responses with evidence which meant they had more to write about in their analyses.
3) Punctuating quotations appropriately:
This was the most challenging, especially considering how many students forget simple punctuation such as quotation marks.
I approached this task almost like a grammar exercise where you are given sentences and have to rewrite them in a different person. For example: Hermia: “I would my father look’d but with my eyes.” Answer: Hermia wished “[her] father look’d but with [her] eyes.”
This final strategy met with varying success. A few students took to it and the battle was to stop them modifying quotes to the point where they became unrecognisable!
Some students are still trying to remember when the full stop goes inside or outside the quotation mark.
Many still need reminding that they need to use quotation marks and cannot just appropriate the Bard's words for their own.
