The Student Experience in Quill Reading for Evidence: Product Walk-Through & Demo
September 23rd, 2024
Quill's newest learning tool, Reading for Evidence, is designed to support students in building both language and reading skills. Students read a nonfiction text and build their comprehension through open-ended writing prompts, supporting a claim with evidence from the text. Designed for students in 8th-12th grade, each activity takes 15-20 minutes to complete. Activities are relevant to ELA, social studies, and science, with a particular focus on 21st century real-world issues.
In each activity, students are prompted to read the text, highlight sentences about a key idea, and finally, to write 3 sentences using the connectives because, but, and so. As they submit responses, Quill's Feedback Bot, powered by cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI), coaches students to improve the accuracy and specificity of their evidence, refine their logic and syntax, and correct any grammatical or mechanical errors. Like in Quill Connect, students can make up to 4 revisions for each prompt, and teachers can see all of students’ revisions in the Activity Analysis report.
Table of Contents:
- Student Onboarding Section Steps
- Reading the Passage
- Highlighting Sentences about a Key Idea
- Completing the Sentence Stems and Revising
- Final Reflection
- Activity Score and Results
Student Onboarding Section
When students begin a Quill Reading for Evidence activity, they will click through four onboarding pages that will walk them through important things to know about the tool. Once a student has completed 3 Reading for Evidence activities, they will no longer see these onboarding pages at the beginning of activities.
The first page tells students what they will be doing in a Quill Reading for Evidence activity:
- Read and highlight a text;
- Write sentences using what they read;
- Revise their sentences based on feedback.
The second page tells students that they will have up to 4 attempts to revise their sentences and reinforces that revision is encouraged. Just like our other activities, students will get specific, targeted feedback on their responses.
The third page tells students that they will receive their feedback from a feedback bot. This is our way of explaining to students that the feedback they get in Reading for Evidence activities is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, which means it’s not a human teacher and it won’t always give perfect feedback. Please let students know we very much want to know if they receive feedback they think is off or unhelpful—they can do this right under the feedback when they receive it by clicking the “Report a Problem” button (pictured below). They can also share feedback at the end of every Reading for Evidence activity.
The final onboarding page lets students know that their teacher will be able to see their final score and writing. We encourage students to go for green by replaying activities they got a red or yellow score on for additional practice.
Reading the Passage
Before students begin reading the passage, they will see a list of the steps they will take in the activity.
Students will click the “Start” button at the bottom of the page.
Then, students will see directions to read the passage and highlight two sentences related to a specific key idea--it may be helpful to know that this key idea will usually be relevant to the first stem students are asked to complete (the because stem).
Students will click the “Got it” button to begin reading the passage.
Students will read the passage by scrolling on the left side of the screen. Once students get to the bottom of the passage, the “Read the whole passage” step will be checked off. If a student tells you they can’t click the “Done” button, they most likely haven’t scrolled through (read) the whole text.
To highlight the sentences in the text, students will click on the sentence they would like to highlight. The sentences they click on will appear highlighted in the text, as well as on the right side of the screen underneath the “Highlights” section.
Students will click the “Next” button.
Students will now be in the heart of a Reading for Evidence activity. Note the layout of the page: the text will be on the left side, and students can scroll up and down to view the whole text; the prompts and sentence stems will be on the right—this is where students will write and receive feedback.
Students will click in the text box to begin drafting a sentence. When they are ready to submit, they'll click the “Get feedback” button.
Just like other Quill activities, students will receive targeted feedback on each submission. The tool will provide feedback on the accuracy and relevance of evidence, use of the conjunction, the quality of paraphrasing (discouraging plagiarism), and use of opinion (encouraging students to only use textual evidence). Only when students have corrected any issues in these areas will they get feedback on grammatical or mechanical errors.
As much as possible, the feedback will try to lead the student to make a revision without directly telling them what to do. However, scaffolds are also designed into the feedback for when students are struggling. For example, if students are having trouble identifying a relevant piece of evidence, a section of the passage will be highlighted for the student to re-read.
“Hints” provide annotated exemplars. For example, students may see an annotated exemplar of an effective use of “because” if they are struggling to provide evidence of a reason for the stem.
If students do not submit a strong, evidence-based sentence by the fifth attempt, they will see examples of strong sentences submitted by other students.
If students do submit a strong, evidence-based sentence, they will see a green box with a checkmark.
Final Reflection
After students complete the last sentence stem, they will be brought to a reflection page that celebrates their efforts. They will also see their 3 final revisions alongside exemplar responses for each stem (2 exemplars per stem). This is a great page to leverage for class discussion!
Following the reflection page, students can also complete an optional emoji survey about the activity. Our team reviews these regularly, so please encourage students to provide their feedback!
Activity Score and Results
After students reflect on their work and complete the optional survey, they'll be taken to a page where they can see their score for the activity as well as an explanation of how scoring works within Reading for Evidence activities.
Reading for Evidence scoring will work similarly to how Connect and Grammar activities are scored wherein students will have 5 attempts to complete the sentence stem with an optimal response. Their final score will always be out of three. They will receive:
- Green (3/3 -100%) for reaching optimal on all prompts
- Yellow (2/3 - 66% or 1/3 - 33%) for reaching optimal on some but not all prompts
- Red (0/3 - 0%) for reaching optimal on none of the prompts
We encourage students to replay their activities and Go for Green to get additional practice on skills and earn a higher grade.
Support & Resources
If you need specific support or want to report an issue, you can live chat with our support team through the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of any page on Quill, or email us at support@quill.org.
We also encourage you to explore our other resources designed to support your implementation of Reading for Evidence, such as:
- Handout for students: Introducing the Joining Words Because, But, & So
- Video for students: What is Quill Reading for Evidence & How Can It Help You?
- 7 Best Practices for Integrating Quill Reading for Evidence
Sharing Your Feedback
This is a new tool and we are eager to hear from you!
Please share your feedback or requests here.
