In all my classes, I emphasize the importance of being able to back up assertions about a given text with information from the text. “Where do you see that in the text?” It’s a typical question in the classroom.

With one group today, we were doing a Socratic Seminar on the question of who is ultimately responsible for Juliet’s fake death at the end of act four in Romeo and Juliet. Our discussion skill focus was on backing everything up from the text and, equally important, recognizing when others have made claims that aren’t necessarily backed by the text and calling them on it.

“Where do you see that in the text?”

“Show me from the text.”

“I don’t see that in the text.”

At the end of the day, a young lady came back to inform me that during math class, she’d felt the teacher was wrong and said, “Excuse me, Mrs. M, could you show me that in the text?”