Students writing about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time often understand that they need evidence but not how to use it. They paste a quotation into the middle of a paragraph with no introduction and no explanation, leaving the reader to guess why it matters. Grading this skill well means looking at three parts: the lead-in, the quotation itself, and the commentary that follows.

Christopher's voice makes this task interesting, because his sentences are often short and literal. A student might quote a single line about how he dislikes being touched and then immediately move to a new topic. The quotation is accurate, but the student has not connected it to a claim about his relationship with his parents or his sense of safety.

Teachers can help by naming the problem consistently. Many classrooms use a simple structure, such as introduce the context, present the evidence, then explain its significance. Whatever language you choose, using it in both instruction and feedback helps students recognize their own errors.

Grade the Whole Evidence Sequence

Looking only at whether a quotation is present misses the point. A strong rubric criterion for evidence asks whether the selection supports the claim, whether it is introduced clearly, and whether it is explained thoroughly. A student with a perfectly chosen quotation and no explanation should not receive full credit.

• The quotation is relevant to the specific claim made in the paragraph
• The student introduces the speaker or scene so the reader has context
• Quoted material is kept as short as possible while still supporting the point
• At least one sentence of original commentary follows each quotation
• Page or chapter references follow the format required by the assignment

Write Feedback That Shows the Fix

Telling a student to explain their quotation more is rarely enough. A better approach is to show a short before and after using their own evidence. You might write a single sentence demonstrating how to connect the quote about Christopher's dislike of crowds to the idea that the train station overwhelms his senses.

Keep the model brief so students must still do their own thinking. You are demonstrating a move, not writing the paragraph for them. Over time, students begin to produce their own commentary sentences without prompting.

Address Overquotation and Underquotation

Some students quote too heavily, filling a paragraph with long passages and little original writing. Others avoid quotation entirely and rely on paraphrase that is too vague to count as evidence. Both problems need different responses, and rubric language should address each directly.

For overquotation, ask students to trim to the words that do the work. For underquotation, ask them to return to the text and find a specific phrase that proves their point. Both habits strengthen close reading, which is a central goal of studying the novel.

Manage the Workload

Checking evidence quality across many essays is time-consuming, since you need to read each quotation and its context. Rubric-aware tools can flag paragraphs where quotations appear without explanation and draft a comment aligned with your criteria. You verify the flags and refine the wording, which is much faster than finding every instance manually.

This approach also produces more consistent feedback across a class. A student in the first period receives the same standard as a student in the last period. That fairness is a real benefit of structuring evidence criteria clearly.