Prove It!

It's hard to believe that it's already November 1st, which means I'm two weeks away from the end of the first trimester.  Fall has been busy, which is pretty typical during cross country season.  I'm looking forward to having more time to plan, to write my concept paper, and breathe again. 

I'm also looking forward to integrating some of the new CCR standards into the classroom.  This week I started with EBC, which is short for evidence based claims.  While Indiana didn't technically adopt the Common Core, anyone who has looked at the standards can tell you that they're pretty much identical.  There's been much debate about the Common Core and honestly I'm impartial.  I see merit to the standards, as well as the flaws.  At the end of the day, I still have to make sure my students can think critically, analyze and understand texts, and write for different audiences.

One aspect of the new standards that I am excited about is the use of evidence based claims in students' thinking.  It's a skill that everyone should have and is one that is extremely important in the tech savvy world we live in.  In a nutshell, students have to be able to make a claim, provide reasons why the claim is true, and support their reasons/claim with text based evidence.  The evidence piece is the part I'm loving most, because it forces students to engage in metacognition, to analyze the text in different ways, and support their argument with proof. 

Too often, we take things at face value.  This is dangerous, because it creates a mindset where we trust anything we see without checking to see if there's legitimate proof or evidence.  Someone's opinion is simply an opinion and sometimes opinions are dangerous. We see a post, video, or infographic on social media, and we click share without even checking the link's authenticity.  As a result, society is plagued by misinformation, biased information, and some information that is downright false.  As a result today's students are walking around in a world filled with half truths, blatant lies, and amazing spin masters. That's a dangerous world, and I'll do whatever I can to prevent them from becoming easy prey.

Here are some great resources:

http://langwitches.org/blog/2012/03/01/annotexting/

www.engageny.org/resource/making-evidence-based-claims-units-ccss-ela-literacy-grades-6-12

http://www.clearbiology.com/helping-students-make-evidence-based-claims/

http://www.cojusd.org/Page/1152

I also suggest checking out pinterest for more great resources!