1. Explanation of Evidence
Learn how to explain your evidence to support your claims and inferences.

2. What is it?
Analyzing how the selected evidence supports the writer's statements (e.g., claims, subclaims, counterclaims, main ideas, supporting ideas, inferences)
analyzing: breaking something down into parts and explaining the deeper meaning of each part
counterclaim: a claim that opposes your claim; a claim that represents the other side.
Inferences: a beneath-the-surface idea you add to the text based on clues and evidence.

3. To explain the evidence...
Analyze the meaning of each part of the evidence. MAKE INFERENCES!
Explain how your inferences connect to your overall claim.
Use reasoning and explain your thinking clearly to show how your evidence proves your claims to be true.

4. Cognitive Skill Rubric
Includes relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, and quotations, and/or examples (as well as illustrations or multimedia when appropriate) that support the main idea.
Explains relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, and/or quotations, and/or examples (as well as illustrations or multimedia when appropriate) that support the opinion/main idea.
Provides relevant analysis that explains how the selected evidence supports claims or statements; analysis stays rooted in the evidence but at times may be vague, illogical, or overly general.
Provides clear analysis that accurately explains how the selected evidence supports claims or statements.
Provides insightful and clear analysis that thoroughly and accurately explains how the evidence supports claims or statements; where applicable, analysis acknowledges some weakness(es) or gaps in the evidence.

5. What it looks like... Claim Evidence Explanation
Provides insightful and clear analysis that thoroughly and accurately explains how the evidence supports claims or statements; where applicable, analysis acknowledges some weakness(es) or gaps in the evidence.
What it looks like...
Claim
Evidence
Explanation
The poem, “American Cheese” by Jim Daniels, expresses the theme that when we move from one class to a higher class, we may fear losing touch with where we came from.
“I eat cheeses / my parents never heard of—gooey / pale cheeses speaking garbled tongues. / I have acquired a taste, yes, and that's / okay, I tell myself.”
In these lines, the narrator states that he eats cheeses that his “parents never heard of,” and this is our first clue that the narrator has experienced upward mobility, which he moved from one class to another. In this case, because he mentions his dad working in a factory, we can infer that he grew up in the working class, and now “at department parties,” which suggests he is a teacher or professor, he is in the middle or upper middle class. The cheeses would feel unfamiliar to his parents, but he has “acquired a taste,” suggesting he has become used to having fancier, finer things in life. We can see that he is a bit uncomfortable with this, because of the way that he tells himself that it is okay. This wording suggests that in fact it is not okay, and it is likely not okay because it creates a separation between himself and his upbringing, as though he has become something he never was, and that somehow feels wrong or like he has lost touch with a part of himself.

6. Explanation of Evidence:
Read the poem on the following link & work with a partner.
What is the theme of this poem? What evidence could support it? How would you connect your evidence to your theme to explain and analyze the evidence?
Read and discuss the poem here.

7. The next two activities will be out of order...

8. Let’s try again! Claim Evidence Explanation
Provides insightful and clear analysis that thoroughly and accurately explains how the evidence supports claims or statements; where applicable, analysis acknowledges some weakness(es) or gaps in the evidence.
Let’s try again!
Now that you have seen a model, use the theme and evidence provided to write
an explanation.
Claim
Evidence
Explanation
The poem, “American Cheese” by Jim Daniels, expresses the theme that when we move from one class to a higher class, we may fear losing touch with where we came from.
“When I come home, I crave—more than any home / cooking—those thin slices in the fridge. I fold / one in half, drop it in my mouth. My mother / can't understand. Doesn't remember me / being a cheese eater, plain like that.”
*This poem is about how how we tend to forget where we come from or the simplicity in life when we are younger. As we get older, we tend to be more serious and more complicated. Mrs. S

9. Let’s Try It.
With a peer, identify a theme, evidence, and explanation of evidence from the poem. Then, compare your answers to the model. Grade yourself on the rubric. Where did you end up?
Claim identifying theme
Evidence
Explanation

10. Congratulations! You’re done.

11. Works Cited
Daniels, Jim. “American Cheese.” Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools. Library of
Congress. 26 June < Web.