Using Evidence and Explanations to Support Our Ideas
One of the main skills we have focussed on in Grades 7 and 8 this fall is how to:
- make inferences about the ideas in narrative texts (e.g., identify a character’s traits or a main conflict)
- support those inferences with specific evidence from the text by using quotes or specific examples
- tying the evidence to the claim (trait, conflict) by explaining how they are connected
Explanations can be difficult, but they are very necessary since an action can be perceived in different ways depending on additional information from the text or your personal perspective. For example, if a character jumps into shark infested water, he might be seen as brave or he may be perceived as reckless. If he was doing so to save a life, you could make the claim that he is brave. On the other hand, if he just wanted to ‘see what happens’ you could say that he is a very reckless person!
In both grades, we practiced together and independently. Grade 7s demonstrated these skills by writing reading journal responses about characters in a short story called “Thank You Ma’am.” Grade 8s demonstrated these skills by writing reading journal responses based on their self-selected novels or short stories.
To make it easier for all students, I thought I would share some excellent student responses with you. I have permission to print the following FIVE sample reading responses from grade 8. Thank you to Kaeli, Isabelle, Gracin, Georgia, and Alexandra!
1-187 October 14, 2021
A Court of Mist and Fury
Reading Response by Isabelle
Feyre is the main character in my book. She has gone through so much more than one human woman can carry. Feyre is so strong and brave. When her family ran out of food and money, she was the one to step up and teach herself how to hunt, to feed her two older sisters, crippled father, and herself. Also, to save Tamlin (her partner/fiancé) and the spring court (her fiancé’s land and people), she went through months of isolation in a cold and dark cell. During those months, she also had to go through 3 trials, two of which almost killed her and one of which affected her so terribly she now wakes up in the middle of the night almost every night from nightmares and throws up her guts because of fear.
Feyre is not only a strong woman, but a kind one too. On the Tithe (a night where the people of the spring court give stuff to them (e.g., cloths, gold, food) to basically pay their ‘taxes,’ a water-wraith (slender gray-eyes that are wholly black and iridescent skin) could not pay what she owed.
“There is nothing left in the lake. We have no gold!” (p.4)
After the water-wraith was escorted out of the manor, Feyre went out after her, disobeying Talin’s orders, and gave the water-wraith her jewelry so the water-wraith can pay for her Tithe and buy some food. One of her other acts of kindness is one late night, Tamlin rushed into the manor carrying a screaming faerie. The faerie was very badly injured, his wings had been torn off his back, and blood was just pouring out of him. Feyre and Tamlin tried to save him, but there was nothing they could do. He had lost too much blood, and there was no way they could heal his back. Feyre knew they couldn’t do anything, so instead of letting the faerie die in fear and die alone, she took his hand and held it and calmed him down and talked to him until he passed on. Even after he passed on, she held onto his hand until Tamlin had told her to let go.
(This is only a section of the reading response entry. Isabelle continued by discussing the conflicts in her novel.)
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0-198 October 14, 2021
Looking For Alaska
Reading Response by Alexandra
In my book, “Looking for Alaska,” one of the main conflicts is human vs. self. One reason this is one of the main conflicts is because in the book everyone, but especially Pudge (the main character), has been dealing with the very strong emotions from before and after one of the biggest events in this book. An example of the people in my book having strong human vs. self conflicts is where Pudge gets really mad at the Colonel for not letting him in on information about Alaska’s death. With her passing, made Pudge and everyone else very irritable which made Pudge act out and get quite angry with the Colonel.
Even though Pudge has had his downfalls, he has some very great character traits. One of his more pronounced traits so far has been his insightfulness and good memory. A great example of these traits is on page 198 when he is on the pay phone talking to his mother. He notices a little flower doodled on the bottom of the pay phone. I doubt it would be that important if the Colonel hadn’t said earlier in the book that Alaska had been doodling flowers before her accident. It was very smart of Pudge to remember the Colonel telling him this because I know that in stressful situations my mind can go blank. So, it surprised me while reading to see him remember such a small detail.
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The Girl I Used to Be
Reading Response by Georgia
The protagonist in my story is Ariel Benson. Her parents were killed when she was 3 years old, forcing her to live with foster parents for 14 years.
When her father’s remains are found, she changes her name to Olivia Reinhart and moves to Medford to try to solve the mystery of her parents’ murders. This proves that Ariel is reckless. In the novel, she even goes out into the woods to try and look for clues. She could be charged for disturbing evidence, or the killer could be out there trying to find her as well. My advice to Ariel is to allow the police to take care of things, so she doesn’t end up in any trouble.
She is also hard-working in a way. She does do a lot of research and even goes to a hypnotist to try to recall any memories to help solve the case. In this case, I believe that she should be asking more questions to the people who were friends with her parents.
Her weakness is that she has a soft spot for her childhood friend, Duncan. She allows him to aid her in the search for the killer, which is quite reckless.
Ariel makes me upset sometimes because she does certain things that make no sense at times. For example, when she visits her mother’s gravestone, she asks the groundskeeper what he knew about Naomi and Terry (her parents), and what he knows about their deaths. In my opinion, this is quite obviously a very dangerous question to ask because the groundskeeper could be the killer (p. 65-67).
The prominent conflict in my novel is human vs. society. Benson is hiding her identity by changing her name because she believes that the person who killed her parents lives in Medford. She is constantly trying to hide from the people who she most suspects committed the crime.
Another conflict consistently shown in the novel is human vs. self. She is constantly trying to dig up memories and takes surprising steps to retrieve them. She goes to a hypnotist (p. 123-129), which in my opinion is very strange. She even goes into the woods to see if anything stirs up in her mind. When she can’t think of any memories, she gets really frustrated. She has nightmares and wakes up in the middle of the night, but can only remember specific, very small, barely even helpful details.
(Georgia continues with another example of a conflict, but to avoid spoilers, I won’t print that part here.)
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1-264 October 14, 2021
The Diviners
Reading Response by Kaeli
There are loads of character in my book, but the main character is Evie. Evie is a pretty reckless character. She takes what she wants when she wants without taking others into consideration. An example of this would be when she went to a party in her small town and pissed off a very rich man with influence over everyone in town with her little “gift.” Now, Evie can see people’s darkest secrets when she holds their prized possessions, and this gift seems to come out when she is heavily intoxicated. So, she went on telling this man which intoxicated that she could read his darkest secrets, so he gave her his ring to read. When she was reading the ring, she called out in front of the man and his fiancé that he had gotten another girl pregnant.
Another example of her recklessness is when she was at a different party she brought her friend Mable, and Mabel is a wall flower. She doesn’t really stand out. She’s boring and bland. She likes to keep to herself. She doesn’t do anything bad at all, especially drinking. But she gets dragged out to a club by Evie and at this club she starts getting harassed by men. So, she goes and tells Evie she wants to leave and why and Evie basically said, ‘no, I don’t want to leave. I’m having too much fun.’ Although I really dislike Evie’s character and couldn’t care less about her, I do think she is smart and will find all the other people with gifts and bring them together to stop the murderer and his demonic beast.
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1-67October 14, 2021
An Enchantment of Ravens
Reading Response by Gracin
In sixty -seven pages, the protagonist of Enchantment of Ravens, Isobel, has intrigued me. I’ve been introduced to her strong character which has many good traits.
For most of her life, Isobel has been painting portraits for dangerous magical, human-like creatures. She has worked for them and lived among them her whole life. So far, she has never been hurt. This proves that she’s an intelligent and clever individual.
After she just finished describing a folk (the dangerous creature), she states, “You must keep in mind, of course, that all of this is a glamour.” (p. 4) This shows that she is not easily tricked and can remember herself in most situations.
As for her portraits, they seem amazing enough to keep her employed. The creativity that goes into making each portrait is clear. In the way Isobel thinks, it’s evident that she is an artist. Lines such as “They were jade green in colour, like polished stones, and at once inscrutable and magnetic animated with the cruel, luminous interest of a house cat watching an injured mouse die,” (p. 65) make me feel as if she’s actually painting picture for me. It’s obvious that there’s more to Isobel’s character than a few good traits, and I can’t wait to see how her character develops in the story.
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In my next blogpost, I’ll share some excellent examples of reading responses from Grade 7!
Do you have questions about reading responses or inferring? Please put your questions in the comments of this blogpost! Do you want to thank the above students for sharing their work? Do you have questions for these students? Please feel free to do so in the comments.
