Teaching How to Embed a Quote through Double Entry Journals

Even if this is your first year, if you have assigned any sort of evidence based response, I know you have seen this. It is the paragraph that is five sentences long with three sentences of quote. Our students don’t know how to embed a quote. And what’s worse, they don’t know about using what I call the “essence of the quote.”

But this is where Double Entry Journals can come in.

Basics of How to Embed a Quote

First things first, before we can begin to teach our students about the essence of the quote, we need to make sure that they know the basics. We need them to know about “the quote sandwich” as it is often referred to in middle school.

Embedding quotes requires students to introduce the quote, attribute the quote and then explain why they included it. I have a lesson on this included in my Poetry Boot Camp Hook Lesson which you can grab here. Or if you just want the basics, my teacher bestie, Amber from Success Through Literacy has this lesson.

Even when students are careful to give us all the sandwichy goodness, their quotes are often too long.

What is the essence of the quote?

As our students mature, they need to focus not only on finding the right quote as evidence, but also the right part of the quote. This is what I like to call the essence of the quote. It is the 1-10 words that they just can’t say in a better way themselves.

I remind them that it is their essay. As a result, they want the writing to mostly be theirs, not someone else’s. If they have a five sentence paragraph that is three sentences of quote, then someone else wrote most of that paragraph. And the way to combat that is through embedding a quote that is as short as it can be.

Using Double Entry Journals to Teach Embedding Quotes

Once students have the quote sandwich down as a way to embed a quote, it’s time to focus on choosing the best quote. And I have found that a great way to do that is through double entry journals. (What’s a double entry journal? You can read all about that in this post.)

You can use double entry journals with prompts (like the ones in the Discussion Deck) or simply by having them choose a quote from the text that sticks out or is connected to the essential question. The key is to have them pick out a quote that is a few sentences or lines long. Something that they can hone in on later.

Once they have picked that quote that might have been the three sentences in their five sentence paragraph, we can start to focus on why that is the one they picked. When they write the response to the longer quote, require them to quote from it.

If they are quoting from the quote, now they already have fewer words to choose from. It’s like peeling an apple before you slice it. Instead of working from the whole apple, now they are cutting just from the fruit itself.

I teach juniors and seniors, so I like to go right to the big cut and ask students to use a quote in their response that is fewer than five words, but you could work toward that goal by having them start with 10 words or even 12. But the idea is to get them to make the slice in the apple. Savor just that one little bit.

Use double entry journals to help students learn how to include the essence of a quote in their analysis writing.

When to Use Double Entry Journals to Embed a Quote

I don’t use this technique in my first unit (Short Short Story Bootcamp). But I do introduce using the double entry journals and embedding quotes with the opening of my second unit: The Power of Craft: Poetry Bootcamp. It’s the perfect time to get students focusing on that skill early in the year. But like so many things in teaching, if you didn’t do it early in the year, it’s not too late to start!