Patterning Part 3: Application and Reflection
The human mind seeks patterns because they help us form our understanding of the world around us. Small children, for instance, become socialized by observing and internalizing patterns of human interaction. In the classroom, teachers seek to help their students identify the patterns in the various academic disciplines. Once students recognize and master these patterns, they can apply them to new content, allowing them to make connections that improve their understanding. Elementary math students are taught to recognize the pattern of numbers and how they fit together. 3 and 4 become associated with 7 and 12. The brain recognizes the connection between the numbers and establishes a pattern. Later, in higher level mathematics, students can apply this pattern to solving algebraic equations.
For my Patterning Project, I initially struggled to identify a topic. As an English teacher, I deal with patterns constantly: narrative, linguistic, poetic, etc. Seeking something concrete, I landed upon evidence incorporation. At the moment, I am working with my Standard Level sophomores on creating their first major literary analysis paper. We have spent an entire week developing an argument, selecting evidence from our current text, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and learning to craft an essay based on the textual evidence. The result was a collection of papers that were difficult to distinguish from one another. The cause? Quote sandwiches.
A quote sandwich is a method for incorporating evidence into an essay. It is generally beloved by Language Arts teachers because it is handy, memorable, and “gets the job done.” Students learn to present evidence in the form of a quotation, sandwiched between context and analysis.
I decided to challenge myself to find an alternative pattern for evidence incorporation. By framing the task within a new pattern, I hoped that I might develop an approach to crafting a literary analysis paper that rendered more individual and nuanced results for my students.
Evidence plays a critical role in a number of patterns in fields of study far beyond the literary analysis essay. It is central to debates, to scientific study, and to the judicial system. Because the judicial system carries the greatest amount of intrinsic importance and gravity, I determined that using the patterns associated with evidence in courtrooms would be the best way to approach my new pattern for evidence in literary analysis. In this case, evidence selection becomes fraught with importance. Which piece of text will best support this claim that I am making before a judge and jury? With an eye to this new authentic audience, students are encouraged to weigh their choices more carefully. They are also more mindful of the needs of this audience in terms of context. What must they communicate to the court in order for the evidence they present to make sense? And how much more thorough must their examination and analysis be in order to prove their point? Suddenly, the need to look critically at the impact of each word within a chosen quote becomes more necessary. The analysis goes beyond a general observation of the nature of the quote, and instead breaks the evidence down to its essential parts, a depth of analysis that does not necessarily take place when students are engaged in the passionless process of crafting quote sandwiches. Further, this new pattern works to eliminate the “cookie-cutter” nature of student essays. The courtroom mindset encourages students to develop a more passionate and engaged voice in their writing, rendering each paper unique.
While my re-patterned approach is still conceptual, a reimagined set of lesson plans that will be applied when I next teach this topic, I am hopeful that the results will provide the evidence I need to make my own case: the patterns of evidence in the courtroom can create more effective use of evidence in the English classroom.
