UNIT 2

MAKING

EVIDENCE-BASED CLAIMS

DEVELOPING CORE LITERACY
PROFICIENCIES

GRADE 6

“Connecting the Dots”
2005 Commencement Address
Stanford University
Steve Jobs

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GOAL

In this unit you will develop your proficiency as a maker and defender of claims. You will learn how to do the following:

  1. Use the details, connections, and evidence you find in a text to form a claim—a stated conclusion—about something you have discovered.
  2. Organize evidence from the text to support your claim and make your case.
  3. Express and explain your claim in writing.
  4. Improve your writing so that others will clearly understand and appreciate your evidence-based claim—and think about the case you have made for it.

TOPIC

In this unit you will be reading and listening to a speech by Steve Jobs presented in 2005 to the graduating class at Stanford University. Jobs’s speech will use stories from his life to communicate his message to the graduates. You will be learning about what a claim is and noting how the speaker makes claims that are based in the details of his own experience. As you apply the skills from Reading Closely for Details of finding key details and making connections, you will take the next step as a reader and thinker: forming your own claims that come from your reading of the text and supporting them with evidence that comes from what Steve Jobs says.

ACTIVITIES

As you move through this unit from initial reading to thinking, and to writing, the activities will help you do a close reading of short sections of the speech and to move from what Steve Jobs tells the graduates to what he seems to mean when you “read between the lines.” You will first practice finding evidence from the speech to support a claim made by your teacher, then move on to forming your own first claims from details you notice in the text. You will continue to search for evidence that leads to and supports new claims and learn how to organize that evidence. From this base, you will write and revise several claims, the final one a global claim about the overall meaning you have found in the speech. You will learn to work with other students in the class to review and improve your writing so that your final claim can be as clear, strong, and evidence-based as possible.

MAKING EVIDENCE-BASED CLAIMS LITERACY TOOLBOX

In Making Evidence-Based Claims, you will continue to build your “literacy toolbox” by learning how to use the following handouts, tools and checklists organized in your Student Edition.

TOOLS

In Making Evidence-Based Claims, you will learn how to use the following tools organized in your Student Edition. You will also apply tools from Reading Closely:

Approaching the Text Tool

from the Reading Closely unit

Analyzing Details Tool

from the Reading Closely unit

Questioning Path Tool

from the Reading Closely unit

Model Questioning Paths

For each section of the text you will read, there is a Questioning Path Tool that has been filled out for you to frame and guide your reading. These model Questioning Paths are just starting points, and your teacher or you may prefer to develop your own paths. The model paths are organized by the steps from the Reading Closely Graphic (approaching, questioning, analyzing, deepening, and extending). They include general Guiding Questions from the Guiding Questions Handout and some questions that are specific to each text and its content. You will use these model paths to guide your reading, frame your discussions with your teacher and other students, and help you when you are doing the final activities in the unit.

Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool

This three-part tool will help you move in your thinking from finding important details, to connecting those details and explaining your connections, to making a claim based on the details and connections you have found. You can also use the tool to record evidence to support your claim and indicate where in the text you found the evidence.

Supporting Evidence-Based Claims Tool

This tool provides spaces in which you can record one or more claims about the text (either your teacher’s or your own) and then quote or paraphrase supporting evidence for the claim(s)—which you will later use in organizing and writing your claim.

Organizing Evidence-Based Claims Tool

This tool provides support as you move from forming a claim and finding supporting evidence to writing the claim. The tool provides space for writing down two or three supporting points you will want to make to explain and prove your claim. Under each of these points, you can then organize the evidence you have found that relates to the point and supports your overall claim.

HANDOUTS

To support your work with the texts and the tools, you will be able to use the following informational handouts:

Attending to Details Handout

from the Reading Closely unit

Guiding Questions Handout

from the Reading Closely unit

Writing Evidence-Based Claims Handout

This handout explains five key things you will need to think about as you write an evidence-based claim. These characteristics are also things your teacher will be looking for in the final claim you write and turn in. The handout includes examples related to Steve Jobs’s speech so you can see what each of the key characteristics might look like.

Final Writing Tasks

This handout will explain to you what you will be doing in the final assignments for this unit: writing a paragraph that elaborates a claim about the final section of the text and writing a multiparagraph essay that presents, explains, and uses evidence to support a claim you have formed about the meaning of Steve Jobs’s speech. The handout will also help you know what your teacher will be looking for so you can be successful on the essay assignment.

CHECKLISTS

You will also use these checklists throughout the unit to support peer- and self-review:

Making Evidence-Based Claims Skills and Habits Checklists

These two checklists present and briefly describe the Literacy Skills and Habits you will be working on during the unit. You can use the checklists to remind you of what you are trying to learn; to reflect on what you have done when reading, discussing, or writing; or to give feedback to other students. Your teacher may use them to let you know about your areas of strength and areas in which you can improve.

Self- and Peer-Review Checklists

These checklists highlight key activities such as discussions, developing claims, and writing essays. The checklists can help you think about how well you are doing on the habits and skills these activities involve.