Atticus and Friends Evidence-Based Writing To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 15

This product is a writing task that requires reading chapter 15 of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

This writing task guides students through the process of supporting a claim with text evidence. To support the claim, students will select the best text evidence from a given passage, present that text evidence in a written paragraph, and also analyze how or why the text evidence presented supports the claim.

This 11-page product includes a vocabulary list for understanding the necessary writing concepts for presenting text evidence, the writing task, the passage, a guided planning page with exemplar, a starter response with one piece of text evidence, a key for identifying the necessary writing concepts, and two choices of rubrics for scoring.

Below are the six concepts used in this package for teaching students how to present text evidence:

TRANSITION — A word or phrase used to connect one idea to the next.

LEAD IN — Gives context or background information to the text evidence. When are we? Where are we? In brief, what’s been happening plot-wise leading up to this text evidence?

ATTRIBUTIVE TAG — Whose words were borrowed? Are those words best described as narration, thinking, or dialogue?

TEXT EVIDENCE — Purposefully selected because something about it makes it some of the best evidence to support a(n) thesis, claim, argument, stance, statement, or answer.

CITATION — MLA in-text citation (Author 283).

LEAD OUT — It’s analysis. It answers HOW or WHY the text evidence helps support the argument being presented? As part of the analysis, the LEAD OUT often picks apart the author’s use of word and phrase choices, including literary elements and writing techniques used. How do these writing choices made by the author support the thesis?

Because lead out is analysis, it often involves making inferences. Thus words such as suggests, implies, and indicates are often necessary to use.