The practice of identifying evidence-based ideas

One good way of scaffolding the practice of generating evidence-based explanations and models is to practice sorting through some ideas and seeing if there’s evidence to back them up. This prompt here encourages students to identify which ideas they jumped to (perhaps without evidence from the text) and to slow down and think about if and how the text supports these claims. This also opens up opportunities for students to point out which ideas are good, educated guesses, or connections, that need to be further examined as the module progresses. Encouraging this self-monitoring keeps the of justification and critique at the forefront, without discounting students’ ideas.