Future Directions

(a) What would you teach as a follow up to this lesson? What is your evidence for this decision?
The original reason for choosing to do this lesson was because my Class Mentor
requested I review/re-teach these skills of finding and using evidence. I created a plan involving a
debate. The goal was to have a more interactive research lesson and collaboration with their
peers on the subject of what classifies as the strongest evidence for an argument. The goal was
to help students develop their writing skills using evidence. An issue I saw in their literacy class
was the students were copy and pasting evidence without citing or putting the information into
their own words.
The purpose of lesson was to teach the students to use evidence to support their claim.
The follow-up lesson would be on how to use the evidence in their writing to support their claim.
For example, we would practice citations and explain what plagiarism is.
For the second lesson, I would use the exit slips they wrote. In these exit slips, the
students wrote their own opinions and claims with evidence on the controversial issue. The next
lesson would entail revising these exit slips and incorporating citation formats.
My goal in focusing on the same topic and writing piece for several lessons would be to
develop a discourse that good writers revise multiple times.
The evidence for this decision to work on citations was evidence in the students
presentations during the debate and in their exit slip. A factor I did not get to address in my
original lesson plan was emphasizing the reference to the source in their presentations. This
would have supported their claims credibility and would have used referencing as? evidence
rather than just claims. In their exit slip, I requested the use of at least one specific example from
the debate to support their claim. I could see the students understood this meant quoting the
websites directly, but the quotes were not embedded in their writing. Instead they were randomly
place at the end or used as the claim itself.
(see pictures)
It would be important in the second lesson to differentiate a claim from evidence for this
reason.
A draft structure of my next lesson would look like:
I. Routine introduction: Learning Target
II. Discussion as a class on how a claim differentiates from evidence.
III. Model a claim. Model incorporating evidence in writing.
IV. Students revise their Exit Slips.

(b) How would you teach this lesson differently the next time you teach it?
The next time I plan on teaching my debate lesson, I will provide more specific
expectations of the norms and group work. Now that I recognize the students are comfortable
researching websites, I would provide more emphasis on the presentation of the debate. For
example, I would slow down my modeling. In the video, I quickly review my internal debate for
moving to Philadelphia from California. My model could have been more consistent with using
examples of in-text citations. For example, UPenn is one of the top schools for education.
According to US News in 2016, it was ranked #5. Next time, I would structure each claim with
evidence and a citation.
A variable that effected the group collaboration was that the students were inexperienced
in this collaborative approach. They found it difficult to accept responsibility for the decision
making required. In my classrooms discourse, I would practice developing organized

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approaches to collaborating with their peers. It is very important for the students to practice this
conversation skill in their daily lives and in their writing skills. By encouraging students to share
and discuss strategies, they have the chance to clarify their ideas for themselves.