Patterns Part 2: Taking It to Court

Once I had set myself the task of rethinking quote sandwiches as a method for incorporating evidence in essays, I started to consider other occasions when someone uses evidence to prove something. The natural answer was: in a court of law.

What if students were tasked with examining their text through the eyes of a lawyer who was preparing to argue a case before a jury? How would this affect their understanding of which moments in a text are valuable and how those moments need to be presented?

The weight given the burden of proof in a court of law helps to promote careful consideration of both the selection and presentation of evidence. By asking students to place themselves in the role of an attorney and by presenting an essay topic as the subject of a trial, I could potentially encourage students to weigh the quotes they selected from texts carefully, considering how well it would support the case they were making. Additionally, by creating an authentic audience in the form of a jury, I could promote the students' understanding of the needs of a reader - that is, they would have a stronger sense of the need to present their evidence with the proper context and the importance of being thorough and clear in their analysis and explanation of that evidence.