Integrating Quotes Lesson Plan When Essay Writing

Integrating Quotes Lesson Plan When Essay Writing
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The Quote Burger Method: Delicious Answers, Everytime!

Learning to integrate quotes is a writing skill that is difficult and takes lots of practice. However it is a skill that most students should master by the time they are ninth graders, due to many state standardized tests requiring quotes in short answer and essay portions of their tests. Students have a hard time understanding how to use quotes effectively to support their writing, and will often misuse quotes during the first stages of the learning process.

As an English teacher, teaching this skill can be as frustrating as it is for the student to learn it! How do you make quote integration “click” in the minds of your students? By associating the steps of quote integration with the basic components of a hamburger, students will have a mental image of proper quote integration that will stay with them well past the lunch bell!

Three Step Quotation Integration

In middle school, high school teachers hope that students are already familiar with the basic, three-step form of quote integration. Using short answer questions over a short story or novel, students will learn that a well-developed answer with quotes should be broken down like this:

1. Restate the question and assert your answer to the question.

2. Insert a quote that supports or reaffirms the answer.

3. Wrap up your answer with another supportive statement that explains or summarizes the quote.

Students should visualize that the quote they choose to support their answer should be “sandwiched” by their own writing, hence, the birth of The Quote Burger Method! Burgers are much more appealing to the eye than a boring list of requirements, so apply each step to a burger diagram. You can draw your own basic burger, with two buns and meat in the middle. On the top bun, write step one. On the meat, write step two, and on the bottom bun, write step three. There are also several teacher supply stores that have burger charts that contain sentence strips for you to write in and add whatever you want to the burger! Seriously!

Practice the basic three-step method, and then when you feel that students are ready to move on to more complex answers, you can explain how the different dressings added to the plain burger symbolize the different levels of complexity in an answer with integrated quotes. Display how some longer answers can use “chunks” of quotes throughout the assertion, and compare the woven “chunks” to the lettuce, cheese, or tomatoes. The Quote Burger Method is guaranteed to produce delicious answers from your students, every time!