ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ELA 4: Find That Evidence 292 Views


Share It!


Description:

Sure we can say that Harry Potter made a living wrestling sharks, but that's a pretty useless claim without evidence to back it up.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

[Dino and Coop singing]

00:12

Picture it you spent your whole life thinking shrimp are super boring [A plate full of shrimp]

00:16

tasty sure but still super boring until one day you read about the mantis shrimp

00:21

which can punch with the same velocity as a gunshot from a rifle we're actually [A mantis shrimp wearing boxing gloves in a ring]

00:27

not making this one up these little guys are tiny terrifying warriors so now that

00:31

you have a new fun opinion on shrimp you might find yourself tempted to share [A boy sharing a fact about shrimp to his friend]

00:35

with your friends if you do though you're gonna have to back up your claims

00:39

with evidence after all a shrimpy little death machine might cause a few raised [A shrimp on the stand in court wearing boxing gloves]

00:43

eyebrows luckily gathering evidence isn't too complicated we just need to

00:48

compile all the little details that helped us to form our new ideas and [Man gathering evidence from a cluttered garage]

00:51

opinions in the first place they might be facts or logical conclusions based on

00:56

the source material you read the source materials could be books magazines or

01:00

even websites shmoop what a weird cough we should get that checked out and even

01:05

if you're like cool I got everything I needed from those sources the first time [Boy wearing sunglasses jumps into bed to take a nap]

01:08

around time to take a nap you're actually going to want to go back to the

01:12

source material and re-read it hey you never know what fun little details you

01:16

might have missed like the fact that the Mantis shrimps punch is so strong it [Matis shrimp punching a fish]

01:20

boils the water around it into vapor bubbles and creates underwater shock

01:25

waves this thing sounds like a Bond villain back to the actual topic on hand [A mantis shrimp facing up to James Bond]

01:30

this process is especially important for schoolwork say you started writing up a

01:34

report about Australia but you want to find some evidence to support the claims [A man in the middle of an Australian wasteland]

01:39

you made in your report so here's a paragraph you read when writing your

01:42

report and you need to find evidence for two ideas in your paper one Captain

01:46

James Cook took possession of Australia in 1770 and two Europeans arrived in [Captain James Cook onlooking]

01:51

Australia in the 1600s so where's the evidence? Well, the first idea is pretty

01:56

easy if we look at that second sentence we see a nice clean fact that supports

02:00

the idea that Captain James Cook took possession of Australia in 1770 bingo what [Sentence of a paragraph highlighted stating James Cook took possession in the name of Great Britain]

02:05

about the second idea we're trying to show that Europeans arrived in Australia

02:08

in the 1600s there is no particular sentence that says this but it is a [A European man stood in a desert in Australia]

02:12

logical conclusion based on the first sentence it tells

02:15

us that Europeans began exploration in the 17th century since we're talking

02:19

about Australia and European exploration generally involved landing somewhere and [A European stumbling across an Australian man]

02:23

you know walking around we've got some solid evidence for the idea that

02:28

Europeans arrived in Australia in the 1600s and it doesn't end with digging up

02:33

facts about the natural world we can even find evidence when we're reading [Man digging up artifacts from the ground]

02:37

fiction too. Take the following bit from one of Aesop fables the hare with

02:41

many friends the hare with many friends if someone told you that the hare in

02:45

this story was scared could you find some evidence to back that up well if [A hare trying to be brave]

02:49

you read carefully you'll notice that the text never actually thought out says

02:53

the hare was scared, but if you pay attention to what the hare is doing

02:57

she's trying to escape from a bunch of hounds which is exactly the kind of [A hare running away from a hound in a field]

03:00

behavior you would expect from someone who's very afraid of hounds, not that we

03:04

know that from experience or anything it's a logical conclusion we're drawing

03:08

from the text which makes it solid evidence and that's it all you've got to

03:12

do is read the source material again to find supportive information and boom [An old man reading a Science Stuff book]

03:16

you'll find evidence man that would make detectives life so much easier we should

03:21

show them this video [A detective speaking to a man]

Up Next

ELA 4: How Words Can Help
1205 Views

Sticks and stones, right? Well...only sometimes. It's a good idea to make sure your words aren't going to hurt others. Let's look at some ways to d...

Related Videos

ELA 4: Debating Like a Champ
744 Views

Learn to debate like a champ. It's way better than debating like a chimp. That just takes mudslinging to a whole new level.

ELA 4: Types of Biographies
277 Views

Today we'll learn about biographies and autobiographies. And no, the second one has nothing to do with the lives of cars. 

ELA 4: Complete Sentences
776 Views

In this lesson we'll subject you to some verbs and predicates. Each one is a necessary part of a complete breakfas—er...sentence.

ELA 4: Word Choice
222 Views

Choosing words carefully is important. You may end up vexing the assemblage of citizens you're conversing with...or you might even just plain bore...