Practice Writing with Textual Evidence (for fiction/stories)

Writing with Evidence

You have analyzed Arthur C. Clarke’s short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth…”? and you have an idea of one or two themes for the story. Let’s use that knowledge to practice writing out a basic constructed response using evidence to support your ideas. To help, you will use the below graphic organizer to gather evidence to support your answer. NOTE: For questions based on fiction texts, one way to organize your response is chronologically. The organizer below is set up to find evidence in chronological order.

PROMPT:

What is the theme of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth…”?

RESTATE and ANSWER:

The theme of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth..." is __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Evidence (chronologically)

Find evidence showing humans are exiled and that the planet has been destroyed and write it here:

Find evidence showing how terrible exile is – the loss:

Find evidence showing how long humans will be exiled:

Explain and Connect Evidence to support your answer.

RACE NOTES

Everything you need to know for constructed response answers about narrative reading passages.

* Restate and Answer in the first ‘focus’ or thesis sentence. Borrow the KEY words to help you stay focused and to show your test readers your answer is focused.

* Give background information from the story that might be needed. Do this in the 2^nd sentence.

* Cite – Bring in textual evidence to help support what you want to say as you use your words to answer the question. Remember, be natural and use your words. The evidence is meant to support what you have to say. LIMIT using long quotes. Use small quotes.

*Consider using chronological order to organize your evidence/paragraph.

* Use signal phrases like the following to introduce evidence: The author says…the author writes…the text says…the story shows…the author describes…the story opens with…

* Use transition phrases like the following: In the beginning of the story…as the story opens…as the action of the story rises…for example…additionally…this shows that…toward the end of the story…in conclusion…overall

* Explain all evidence. You should explain some in your own words before dropping in the evidence; and, you can explain more after the evidence in the same sentence or in the next sentence.

* Wrap up your paragraph with a final sentence starting with a conclusion-type transition word. Overall…finally…ultimately…in conclusion