Episode 3: The Art of Introducing Sources

Jonathan: Welcome to Literacy Geek Show. We are your hosts, Jonathan LeMaster and Lee Ramsey. The goal of our literacy geek show is to inspire educators and spark great conversation that helps students meet and exceed reading and writing standards. Join us as we geek out about our journey to revolutionize literacy in instruction. All right, Lee. Today we are talking about or geeking out about how to help students with their text-dependent writing skills. And I think the goal for today, because this is becoming more of a series, is focusing on integrating sources. And some people like to talk about it as introducing sources. So we've got these two skills that we're talking about today that build, that skill ability that kids need to successfully participate and pass these text-dependent writing tasks.

So let's start with a little bit of context. We did a deep dive into the college and career readiness standards, and not to our surprise, we found that six standards were called out specifically for this type of task. And we thought it would be good.

Lee and I talked before the show about the importance of going over these standards. Do people know them? How well do they know them? And I think it's just important for us to identify what they are. So instead of reading them all, we're just gonna take pieces of them. So you get the kind of breadth of the work and how important, how essential introducing sources is what we're focusing on today and why we need to continue to support our students as they learn this skill. So ironically, R1, which is a reading standard, talks about citing textual evidence, and we could talk about that, but we're planning to talk about this skill in the next show and how the reading and writing relationship works with text-dependent writing, but R1 cites textual evidence. Then let's go to the writing standards. W1 supports claims with relevant evidence. That's gonna be for the argument standard. So the common core or the college career readiness standards have, in the writing, the first three arguments, then informational, and then narrative. So W1 is that argument, supporting your claims with sources.

W2 is informational writing, and it says to develop the topic with concrete details and quotations. Okay, so we're still using sources here. W6 says to conduct short research, drawing on several sources, right? So now we're talking about synthesizing sources. W7 refers to gathering information from multiple sources and using them in your writing. And W8 says, to draw evidence from literary and informational text to support your analysis. So here we are. We have six standards that are all about introducing and integrating sources into writing, right? And we have to just pause for a minute and say. That is a ton of standards for something that we sometimes just see randomly in a rubric or sometimes not at all, by the way, in a rubric, and then we have the, we have these states that are administering tests that ask students to engage in these text-dependent tasks and analysis. Well, it's no wonder. Look at all the standards that this type of question, this text-dependent analysis question asks of kids and what they have to know. And I think the goal for today is to dig into that, to understand what it means to introduce an integrative source. You know, why is that important? And as more and more states bring these types of texts into their testing environments or their statewide tests, we need to get to the bottom of it.

Lee: From the last episode, what was so interesting is when we started with how we help students grow with text-dependent writing and your first comment was the next level down of introducing and integrating sources. And then I was blown away when you mentioned your gut led you down a direction where you practiced it every week.

You call this an essential skill and I love that. It is one of the major puzzle pieces that are so important for a student to be able to successfully write about a source. And I know the standards are pointing us in that direction.

Love to hear about your gut, experience in the classroom, and hearing about this skill. This skill is not even said once inside of the standards. We are inferring it from the other words that are being used. Nowhere does it say introduce or integrate. And it could be the number one key for a student to be successful. So we're dedicating this podcast to that and what we can do to help.

Jonathan: Right. So what is the issue then if you, you, you hit on one, which is. Kind of amazing. You have to infer it. You have to go to, what we call, unpack the standard to better understand what we need, what kids need, what we need to do as educators, and what's missing in our instructional practice.

What's missing? Where are the opportunities to build students up to get them prepared to do this kind of work? What do you think? What comes to mind? And from your own experience and just from the things that you've seen and the work we've done for the last decade and a half, where do these gaps exist, and what can we do about it?

Lee: We were chatting about it earlier and the first thing that came to mind is more of the importance of the ability to go find sources. And, and to go research, then actually introduce them. And, I feel like that might come back from the research standards when, you know, that's what I remember having a research project.

Through our conversations, I've realized how this is after you find all that research you do that trying to make sure you are, you know, you're integrating and summarizing what they've said in a very intelligent way, and that to me is kind of a gap. And, maybe we're just, we haven't made it there in education or just the curriculum hasn't caught up with being able to support this type of writing.

Jonathan: Yeah, you talk about research and it makes me think of two things. Number one, you and I obviously grew up doing research projects. They're my air quotes there around research projects. And, and I do that because a lot of it was just kind of finding information and transferring it from one space to another, one medium to another.

But one thing that I try to tell teachers is when you assign research there, there's a real danger because we lose control of our sources, and if I don't have control of my source, then I am not gonna be able to help my students read it with any kind of strategy or understand, is this, this credible source or not credible source, or is this a source that's actually related to your topic or not related to your topic?

It's kind of mildly related to your topic. That's one area of concern. The other is, like you said, we're spending a lot of time maybe assigning research because we think that's what happens in college, which we know isn't necessarily the case. We don't have a bunch of professors assigning a bunch of research projects, what you actually see happening is professors expecting students to use sources for making new ideas, writing new arguments, supporting information, supporting claims that they're making and research is not what you immediately see, yet that's the go-to, is I'm gonna do research and then kids like it 'cause they get to use their own topic and their writing and that's fine.

And there are some states that actually have added to the CCRS. Full sections called research and that's great too because those skills are important. We talked about that too before the show. It's like getting a kid to be able to find those sources and use them, gather them, understand what you, all of that's really, really important. But when you start writing with them, that's where it becomes really essential and in the space of argumentation. You're really not just transferring information from one page to another page. You actually have to, to use it effectively and strategically, and all of that requires careful integration of your sources, right?

All of that requires a real skill that has to be practiced.

Lee: Yeah.

Jonathan: So the idea of achievement gaps, I've been really big on pushing, I want us to, not you and me, but I would love to see education continue to move away from the conversation of achievement gap and more into the conversation of opportunity gap.

When I talk about, and you and I have talked about achievement versus opportunity, what are your thoughts about that and how are they different? How is moving from achievement gap changing the way we think about instruction and maybe helping our kids out because we're, we're shifting the way we're thinking about gaps? Maybe you can explain a little bit of that for us.

Lee: Yeah, we've chatted about this here and there, and I think the achievement gap is really putting it on the student

and an opportunity gap almost is. In my eyes, it's an opportunity for the educators, and the administrators, to start to see where there are gaps, where they're not practicing the skills enough, which is causing the achievement gap problem.

Right. And if we can talk about it positively, I think it's always a better direction for us. So, just positive language for one, but for two, really looking inward and understanding where, how are they not receiving the practice necessary to master the skill, right? So, um, I think that's the big thing.

And, we were chatting about standards and skills. And with the new standards, they're a standard, really is now the skill, which we love, but we still hear the language so differently. When we're in conversations with administrators or administrators at the district level. They don't really say the word skill.

It's all standard. And when we're in conversations with teachers in the classroom, we're hearing the word skill a lot more, where standard isn't used that often. And, I think this is an opportunity gap for the classroom teacher and the district administrator to get on the same page and standard/skill, like really start to push those words together, make 'em synonymous, I think would be so important.

Especially when you're talking about reading and writing standards. They're all really the ability, how well someone can read, how well someone can write, right? So I. Such an important shift would help the whole education industry talk to each other a little bit better.

Jonathan: Yeah, that's an amazing point, just that that language gap, that there's that language gap, that the, there's a need for common vocabulary,

right? There's a need for common meaning.

What does it mean when we say teach the standards? Or what does it mean when I say I'm teaching a skill?

And, what skill are you teaching?

I think that's fascinating and I think there might be a gap around, we throw the word out, College and Career Readiness or CCRS and, and, college admin, uh, sorry, district administrators. Definitely, we will, we'll say CCRS a lot, right? But I think what's fascinating is perhaps even I, I don't even know if there was, there was formal training of why did they call 'em college and career readiness? Like, why, is it because of the college-going culture, we're all going to college and so we're just gonna call our standards college? And I think there's more to it than that. When the College and Career Readiness standards were created, they were created with university professors and community college, uh, professors.

I then had high school teachers, who were designed and experts in the field to find what are the skills that kids need to know to be successful in college. 'Cause we talked about this last time, this massive shift to a college-going culture. Now everyone's going to college. What do they need to know? Right? And so if six of the standards in the CCRS, the College and Career Readiness Standards are pointing to introducing and integrating sources, then we need to really pay attention to that because there's, there's a finite amount of these standards, which is nice. There's not a ton of them, right? There's nine 'cause the 10th is a suggestion. Nine in reading and, and nine in writing again, 10 is, is this kind of like odd grade-level suggestion standard that isn't like a specific call out to anything. So of the 18 standards, nine of which remember, are supposed to be just reading, six of those. Six of those 18 standards are about introducing integrating sources. That's tremendous. And the reason is because every college professor, every community college professor who sat on those committees, knows that kids graduating high school and going to college must be able to write about sources. They have to be able to do that. It is an absolute must skill for kids as they enter into year one, year two college. We see kids dropping out of school for lots of different reasons, but we can't ignore the fact that a lot of kids drop out because they're just not ready for it. They're not ready for, the rigorous ways of thinking and knowing, and doing that exist at college. The CCRS was designed to help kids be successful when they transition. So, I think it's fascinating.

Lee: It is, it's so important. And now, we're thinking about the prerequisite of this skill and what's the next prerequisite. So are there any prerequisite skills for introducing sources?

Jonathan: Yeah, we assume the kids understand what is being written at, at such a level that they can determine if the source is credible. If the source is reliable, if the source is adequate to reuse it as a response or as support, they have to understand it to use it effectively. So we go back to a lot of reading skills, close reading skills that have to be taught before we can even get into telling kids how to use a source. And if we talk about a lot of in literacy geeks about transferability, if we're teaching, if we're helping kids read closely, but we're not explicit and we're making all the handouts and we're doing all the thinking, but they are practicing close reading, that doesn't have as much transferability as us giving kids the ownership of. Close reading by teaching them skills and then asking them, which skill would you use here? Which skill would you use there? Making it, making them more strategic in why you would choose one strategy versus another. Getting them to learn. Those close reading skills will transfer to an assessment, a text-dependent assessment where they have a source or two or four that they have to read. Right, and then they. Have to then use the source. So I mean, there, there's so many prerequisite skills that come with this that you can't just be like, all right, today we're doing introducing sources. And that's it. I mean, you've gotta spend a week alone looking at the text that they're gonna be introducing and digging into it and understanding it before you could even start writing about it.

Lee: Right, right.

Yeah, See, it's interesting. Yeah. I remember all the trainings we would have and it didn't matter what the subject was. The first thing you'd start with is whether they understand the prompt and what they're, what they're supposed to do.

And, and I think the longer you taught, the more you realize they had no clue. They skimmed it, they didn't, they didn't dig into it. Uh, and so it's kind of interesting. This is very similar. For them to talk about the text, they have to understand it, at a deep level. They will have to read, read it a few times, really, really look for certain pieces that they want to talk about, um, and what, what the writer is doing.

And, and that's, that's a challenge if they're not practicing that in, in the classroom. Super interesting. So I know one of the things that, we pride ourselves on is trying to help. Implement this in the classroom. So, Jonathan, maybe you can show your screen and go through a few of the ways, that you taught this in the classroom and help kids practice it on a weekly basis.

Jonathan: Yeah, we're gonna try this out. We are going to just show a few things on our screen as Lee suggested here. And, I'm gonna start with the verbs themselves. We're talking about prerequisite skills and if we're talking about helping kids introduce a source. We obviously need to teach them things like, is this a poem?

Is this an article? Is this a short story? What is the genre that we're reading? That's critical. Instead of just saying it in the text. What text, the more specific we can be, the better, and clearer we're gonna be with our readers, and the more they're gonna understand, our arguments if we're really controlling our source.

So what is this text? And then who is the author? And I would always tell my students that, if we don't have an author, we probably shouldn't be reading it. And, and, and that's because I don't know who this person is and I can't use any of the person's background in my introduction if I wanted to use it for credibility.

I'll talk about that in just a minute. And then I need to understand what the writer is doing and, to a lot of people who, don't have a background, in reading academic literacy, I. We authors do things in texts, right? They illustrate things, they argue things, they challenge things, and they extend ideas.

They complicate issues. And so I want, my students to be able to identify what a writer is doing so that I can use the source effectively. So they need words, they need verbs to use. So author X what? Argues, or is the author listing, or is the author summarizing? Or is the author critiquing or is the author, stating something?

So this list is one of the lists that you could use with your students to not only get them away from saying, says, right, my author X says, which is not a strong verb, but more importantly it's not clear. It's not clear where this writer stands on the issue that you're talking about, and that's why says is not an effective verb.

When you're writing with sources, you want to use a verb that aligns with what they're really up to. What are they trying to do? And so if you can identify that, then you can use a better verb. Be clear for yourself, for your writer, or for your readers who are reading your work. And then from there, we have sentence starters.

So a lot of these handouts we can make available in our Geek Gazette. And if you're listening, what I'm trying to do is I'll try to read these to you so you can hear them instead of just seeing them. But please check out, the videocast on our YouTube channel. But the introducing sources and templates now take those strong verbs. And ask the students to think about, okay, I need a couple of things to introduce. I need the author's name. I need that strong verb, and then I need what the author says, whether that be, uh, paraphrased or cited directly. Or quoted directly right from the text. So there are a couple of templates that you can use to do this to help students. Get familiar with how to introduce a source. And if you go look at any academic work, you're gonna see these templates here. Author's name X argues that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. According to author y da da da da da, right? In the article, name of the article, author Z argues that, contends, that summarizes the work of. And so as a reader, when I'm reading this source integration, I get a lot of good information. I get who is speaking, what text is coming from, what is this person's position based on the verb, and then what the person says. Right? So you're getting a ton of information and, perhaps Lee, more importantly, these source introductions.

I separate my voice from someone else's voice. So students need to learn how to clearly show when they're speaking, when they've stopped speaking, and when now they're bringing someone else's voice into their writing. That needs to be crystal clear and that is a challenge for a lot of young writers.

They don't know how to make those academic. I'm gonna use a, a, a writing term here. Moves, M-O-V-E-S moves. They don't know how to use those academic moves. And so these templates, uh, sentence starters are really useful. And then the last one is a template like this. And this is where we're getting the integrating sources.

So, alright, we added our verbs, and then we had our sentence starter, right, to introduce the source with maybe some attribution, giving some credibility to the author, who is this person? Why would I be using this person? And then we, they make two more moves to integrate completely and that's to interpret what has been quoted here and to evaluate its significance. That would be kind of like a full, um, introduction and integration with a source. So I just want to kind of get your thoughts, obviously, I'm on the education side and you're on, the ed tech side. 

So share as I'm closing this out, what is something you're thinking.

Lee: Yeah. You know, I, I think it's the, uh, the handout before this one. Introducing sources is super interesting. I, you know, I, I feel like there's just a few words when you're introducing, um, really, and it's, that's where the power is. I think that's kind of cool. I love to simplify everything, so just seeing the.

The two or three words, and then you've, you've always said to improve your writing use, use better verbs. Uh, so it is really what you're doing. It's a very specific place. And then you're concentrating on this. And it makes me see how important of an aspect

talking about the source and, and why this is, why, why you like the source or what, what is it about this source and how, how it fits to what you're talking about.

It is starting to become crystal clear in my mind. How this makes text-dependent writing, how important this little aspect is of text-dependent writing. 'cause you have to be talking about what that text is and you want to do it smartly. Uh, so that, yeah, it's kind of fascinating.

That's cool. I have never been through or taught, uh, you know, no teacher ever went through introducing or integrating sources with me, and just, it wasn't happening when I was back in school. But to see that, I love the templates. I feel like that's a little closer to math and science.

We always start with, uh, seeing examples on how, how to, how it works and, and how people. You know, how, how a strong writer would do that and go through some, some templates and examples. Uh, so I, I love those starters. I think those are awesome. I think students would, would love 'em. And I, and I know you wouldn't have put 'em together if it if you weren't seeing success in your classroom.

You have an amazing gut that it's like intuitive when you can see the students growing and you just know this is the right thing to do and I'm just gonna keep doing this. And so. Yeah. I, I love it. I, I think it's cool. I can see how a teacher could just start doing that tomorrow. They could take these handouts, we'll pop 'em on the Geek Gazette so you can use them in your lessons.

Jonathan: Well, and that it's immediate confidence, you know, and you're, and you're being transparent in your expectation. Like, this is what I want it to sound like, look like, instead of, you know, you, I energy's a source. And I, when I first started writing, I, I was a very, um, feel good focused writer, uh, a teacher of writing.

So I was like, you know, how does it feel? Uh, you gotta write your conclusion the way it feels. You know, and, and I think there's, for a very, very, very small percentage of students that makes sense in their brain, but for most students, that doesn't make any sense at all. And I, I, I can't understand what you want me to do, and I'm not feeling it as much as you tell me to feel it. My favorite strategy, year one teaching was, um, read it again. And, and if something, when something comes to you, there's like some mystical thing that's gonna happen. Um, that's, that's what it is. And that's how you, how you conclude. And, I would tell my, um, young writers, keep reading until something comes to you.

I was like? Now as a veteran teacher with over two decades of classroom experience, uh, I can tell you that again, as cool as it sounds, um, it, you know, it only reaches a few kids

where you can tell them like, look, I. This is, this is the way, once you think about this, this is how you can do it. That gives them that confidence and it gives them that, that roadmap to success. And again, I challenge you to go and look at academic writing. They're all gonna use, I. This style of writing, this introductory style where we're gonna introduce who we're talking about, we're gonna establish the credibility of the person, because that helps my credibility as the writer. Uh, this is stuff that's, you know, people write books about this, right? I think we mentioned, they say, I say, um, if we didn't, our last podcast. It's an, it's an amazing book that we recommend and we could put a link, um, to that as well in our Geek Gazette. But they say, I say is, is a book written for students to help them introduce and integrate sources. And there are so many issues surrounding integrating sources like kids not quoting and just using someone else's words. Kids not signaling, if you will, when someone else is talking, kids not using, um. Sources that are, are worth using if you will. They're like not effective or they're overusing sources and the whole paper is someone else's ideas and not their own.

I mean, there's just lots going on with this particular, um, skill. If we, well, six skills, right? Six standards, um, that, that we wanna, we want to go after. And it's one of the reasons why Literacy Geeks made a college and career readiness handbook for middle school. Where we walk kids through these different aspects of writing and integrating sources as they prepare for text-dependent tasks. so I think that's one of the, one of our resources that are just handy, hole punched, ready to go in student binders. This college and Career readiness handbook I think is just amazing. And it talks to kids as their writers, like, what is it that you know? Where is your position coming from in this particular argument?

What do you feel about it? Why do you feel that way? Like, what are you writing for? What source are you gonna use? Why are you gonna use that source in a nice way to, to support students? And you and I lead, and everyone who went to college. Grew up with these, like writing handbooks and they were so cool.

You'd go to the, the, the school library or the, uh, school bookstore and you would buy the, I think mine was keys for writers or whatever, and it was such a great resource to have. Um, so we, we built kind of like a key for writers, if you will, for middle-level students, for both reading and writing. So it's pretty cool.

Lee: Yeah, I love all the questions that you're modeling for the students.

Jonathan: I know they just started coming out.

Lee: And you're just like, they, you wanna say this, and then you wanna think of this and you wanna think that. You know, and I, I know there's a debate out there on whether these handouts or, even, you know, is that the students should be creative and can be coming up on it, on, on their own.

And, you know, there are different approaches. Uh, but I know in music, when someone starts. You know, learning how to play the piano, um, they don't creatively start with their own song. They get to learn, you know, different tunes. Uh, and it's not until they practiced the same song multiple times that they finally get to the point where they can be creative on, on the song and, and make it their own, which we hear on the voice or different places on tv, you know, make it your own, which, but.

Learning from how people do it. Well, you know, um, so kind of, kind of crazy. Uh, but and then, you know, John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches ever at UCLA,

uh, reading his book and he talks about how, uh, he teaches his kids how to put on their socks. It was mind-blowing to me that why? Why would you be teaching an 18-year-old how to put on their socks?

you know what? They're not putting 'em on, right? They're getting blisters. They're doing this, they're doing that. And I think he learned it was all the little things that mattered the most. And so as we talk about this text-dependent writing. You know, it's, we're getting down to the very little pieces of it and those are the important things that, that, that's gonna make the great rider.

And then we need to practice those little skills like putting on our socks or learning how to play a certain song. You have to start from square one.

Jonathan: Yeah, you do. And, and, and over the years I learned that we needed to spend more time with this particular, um, type of, of writing and skill. And so I incorporated into my, into my instruction nearly every day, every time we picked up a text. We would practice integrating sources. Every time we read a poem, we would introduce something, we would talk about the metaphor, and we would, you know, in introduce, you know, in the poem, what's the poem's name? Do we use quotation marks around the poem, or do we underline the poem? How do we know? Why do we do this? Um, why do we have italics now? Um, why do we italicize books instead of underline them? There was this thing called the typewriter, I mean, every single day. Um, it's just hammering them on how we talk about sources because it's, it's everywhere.

Again, to reiterate a point that was made earlier in the show, it is what kids need most going into college there, the ability, three main tasks is going into college. One is the ability, to read and break down a text effectively. The second is to summarize what someone has said fairly. Meaning you don't just read it and then write about your own opinion or misrepresent an idea because you don't believe in it or agree with it. You have to be able to read someone's ideas and represent it fairly in a non-biased summary. And the third is integrating sources. Those are like the three, what our research shows are three core skill sets.

And so are we working on those every day with our kids, you know, or is that just something we do once or twice a year and we move on? And then the kids are expected to be masters of this when they go into college.

We're gonna go into our, one of my, uh, my new favorite segments, uh, where it's, let's get techie, uh, and, uh, there's a, there's a little bit of dance party that's gonna happen.

And then we're going to start on technologies, and reasons for technologies as it relates to this. Uh, integrating sources, introducing sources. So we're just gonna get started here. All right. Nicely done. Nice. Good moves. Alright, so Lee, tell us about technology and, you know, it's, it's fascinating always talking with you because. You always think about things a bit differently than I do, and so it's just amazing 'cause the synergy what, how I talk about things and think and how you do.

It's just, it's amazing and I'm always learning so much. So you, you go ahead and talk to us about technology in this space. What does it look like and, and what do we use technology for?

Lee: Yeah, so I think I'm always listening to what I think I love to start by how you're doing it in the classroom currently, down to those little details and a, as we were going through that in this podcast and preparing, uh, the, the number one thing that you kept talking about, I'm like, Hey, let's, let's show it to the people watching the podcast.

And, I want you to show an example. 'cause, you know, visuals can be so great. The first thing out your mouth was that I don't have a documented camera. I don't have a documented camera. And, and I, I've had previous conversations with you and you love to put the article or the poem or whatever, whatever text it is, and you love to take your pencil and go through it, and then you love to model the, the questions that are going through your brain when you're doing it so that they start to.

Uh, and, and, and be able to answer those things anytime they read a text, which is so beautiful. So to me, that's like the first low tech version, um, that, uh, uh, of technology that if you can add to your classroom, you should, you get, getting these kids in front of more, more of the texts. Uh, you know, you say it's so important.

And then modeling that. And, whenever you said model, it did, it was, it was the fact, I think you're modeling the questions you're asking.

You always say model, but that's more important. I think. I, I don't know. Do you agree with that or when you say model, is it, is it something else that it's really how your brain's attacking and learning about that text?

Jonathan: Yeah,

you wanna model the physical, you wanna model the physical strategy, and then you also wanna model the cog, the cognitive work that's going on so that they understand decision making.

So why did you draw that arrow right there? Why did you underline that versus circle it? Why are you placing a bracket around that information and just having those conversations and asking questions or pausing in a word and saying, that's interesting?

I wonder where he's going with this, or, I wonder where she's going with this. And they're like, what do you mean? She's going to the next sentence? It's like, oh, no, no, no. You're, you know. Yeah. It's, it's, it's having fun

with them, and it's quite engaging if you ask them to engage with you. Um, modeling is done in the beginning where they are observers.

Then they become active participants where you stop and say, if I were to draw an arrow right here, what two ideas would I connect? If I were to draw a bracket around something, where would I draw that bracket and why? Turn to a neighbor. And boy, the engagement just explodes in the classroom.

Lee: I love it. And we would see that in our training. I know we'd go out and teach teachers and that moment when you'd be under the document camera and you'd be teaching teacher and that was the best man, the best conversations were right there around that text or I don't think that author means that. And man, as soon as there's a little bit of disagreement, it was, it was the, the learning was off the chart, right?

It was, it was so cool. And that, and that was, I remember you and some of the colleagues would, would step back and would be like. So happy that we got here, uh, and not like, have to be right. You know? And then, and that was, that was kind of a cool moment. Like, yeah, just 'cause you're underlining something doesn't mean that student needs to, but they need to start to think, in similar ways.

You're thinking. And so, yeah, I love that. So, yeah, I feel like technology, document camera, uh, number one, uh, number two, you know, digital handouts, easy way to give them, you know, samples, templates. I know that's low tech too. Uh, but everyone usually has a Google Classroom or someplace where they can store information.

So we will post that in the Geek Gazette. Uh, so you can download 'em, pop 'em in if you think they're useful, make your own, uh, you know, whatever you want to do. But we, we think, uh, samples and templates and, and starters are, are so super important. Um, so, and then the. The third thing, uh, that, that we've created here at Literacy Geeks is auto-grading writing.

Jonathan: It is amazing.

Lee: We are blown away. We love it. Uh, we think there are two possibilities. One is assessments throughout the year to show where they are with that sub-skill of integrating and introducing sources. Uh, so we can check in multiple times a year and see the growth and see that across a classroom, a site, and a district, which is amazing. And then the next thing we're currently working on is the ability to do smaller tasks. So they just write a paragraph on the introducing or integrating sources and we can grade and give personalized feedback right there in the moment. We believe that speeding up the personalized feedback and giving an immediate grade is the game changer needed to allow them to practice this skill more. And with more practice, we're gonna see them grow even quicker.

Jonathan: Yeah. That's amazing. I think one of the flaws in my educational practice, and it's just because it wasn't available, is that even though I had 35 students in a class practicing introducing sources, I didn't always know exactly what they were writing, and I didn't know exactly if they had the comm in the right spot. Or if they put the quotation marks around the right source

and, and so, or if they were quoting or paraphrasing, I would have check-ins, or they write on the whiteboard. Let's do some grammar fixes to see where they are. Um, every once in a while they write a note card, index card, uh, introduction to something and they would turn it in.

So I got that kind of formative assessment, but I didn't have something as complete as what we have built where it will look at all aspects right there, every single kid, and give personalized feedback. And, what's most impressive is so much of this source integration stuff doesn't even show up in rubrics. But they do on ours because we believe in prerequisite skills. And those prerequisite skills show up in our rubrics and we can assess based on those skills. Whereas when you assess on evidence, it's, it's a, it's a pretty gigantic area where, you know, you, you could be looking at the credibility of a source.

You can be looking at the, the, um. Adequacy of the source. You could be looking at the completeness of the source. You can be looking at how well you cited it. If you quoted it, if you paraphrase, I mean, there's just, you could drive a, what we like, say drive a truck through it, right? It is just so big. So we like to break it down and so we have integrating sources and you could do a quick writing that takes six, seven minutes in class and have that auto-graded and working on these six standards, which is just so awesome. So cool.

Lee: Yeah. that's amazing. Increased practice is the number one thing, and then we talked about the other day on the last episode was data. It's not actionable. If I gave you a two out of four on evidence. What does that mean?

Jonathan: Right. Which part?

Lee: We need to go down one more level. If a student is getting a one out of four on introducing sources and or attribution, then I feel like that's tangible. Teachers are gonna know how to create some lessons, to help the students improve on that skill. As teachers focus on those sub-skills, students will be much better at text-dependent writing.

Jonathan: Yeah. Awesome. I agree. So great. All right, so we're looking at the next show. I think we, we kind of said it and we're, we agree. We need to focus on close reading. I think what we wanna do, is, is have a segment on close reading practice and talk about how that relates to text-dependent writing and how that supports the analysis of texts and, and getting kids ready to write. And I think that's gonna be, a great show. And we're excited to have you hear that one and see what kind of conversation comes out of that. So thanks for joining us today and geeking out with us. We appreciate you. As always. We look forward to next time.