Critical Thinking & Writing Early Release/Late Start February 5, 2015

o Participants will increase their knowledge of instructional methods associated with improving evidence and elaboration in student writing. o Participants will analyze student writing samples to determine instructional implications.

In order to earn a top score of “4” for Evidence and Elaboration, a student must be able to: Integrate appropriate text evidence supporting the task THIS REQUIRES CRITICAL THINKING! Explain how the text evidence supports the task. THIS REQUIRES CRITICAL THINKING!

So, What Is Elaboration Anyway? “The Iditarod is a race like no other. It is more than 1,000 miles long, and it is run across ice and snow. It takes at least nine days and dogs are its stars” The Ititarod has no race like it. It is longer than one thousand miles and is ran on frozen ice and snow. The ititarod takes nine or more days to complete. What about NOW? Is THIS elaboration? The Ititarod is a very unuzual race becase it is so long and the racers are actually dogs rather than people and cars. Instead of racing on a track like many races do, the Ititarod takes place in Alaska over 1,000 miles of ice and snow, which make the conditions differnt from most races we may think about. This statement IS elaboration because: It shows critical thinking It is explaining why the evidence is important enough to be written in the essay

Each row represents a paragraph of writing. By completing each section, both student and teacher can identify potentially missing components and strengthen the writing.

Thesis Statement: HOW : track each horse herd, horses are adopted WHY: not enough food for all of the horses and they become sick and weak. How: They track each herds size to make sure they are not too large Why: When a herd is too big, there is not enough food for all of the horses Paragraph 8: “There are too many horses to survive on the wild land in the west” The wild land doesn’t have enough food or space for so many horses. How: A few horses are caught and put up for adoption Why: keeps herd sizes under control and the horses healthy Paragraph 13: According to the article, there is a group that gives advice on the wild horses. The government also stated that the females could have an operation to keep them from giving birth to foals (baby horses). Horse supporters think this is unnecessary. Suzanne Roy stated, “The real problem is that there is too much cattle and sheep on the land.” This clearly shows that the government can balance the land and improve the health of the horses.

Crawford, M. & Zwiers, J. (2011). Academic conversations: classroom talk that fosters critical thinking and content understandings. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishing. Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper reading comprehending challenging texts, Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishing.