Education Commons^™

Observing Women: Using Annie Leibovitz To Teach Thinking And Writing, Joanne M. Marshall

Joanne M. Marshall

Good writing makes a key point and supports it with detailed evidence. In its rubric for students' five-paragraph timed essays, the Illinois state board of education refers to this feature as "Support/Elaboration," or "the degree to which the main point is explained by specific details and reasons" (Illinois State Board of Education, 2002). At its essence, support and elaboration is about students' ability to think critically as they reason and summon evidence to make an argument. There is a solid history of research summarizing the link between thinking critically and writing well, mostly coming from the work of George Hillocks …