Reading Activities / Point Evidence Explain

Point, Evidence, Explain

Children lose marks not for having the wrong idea but for stopping halfway through the right one. PEE is a shape that makes the missing half visible — three boxes, and the third one is nearly always the empty one.

Explain is where the marks are. Point and Evidence come naturally. Explain is the taught bit.

Three questions at once. Tabs switch between them, so one sheet covers a whole comprehension.

Prints the model AND a blank. The worked example stays on the page while they do their own.

Model the answer on the whiteboard · printing the sheet is free

The sheet it prints

The printable point, evidence, explain sheet — a worked example followed by blank boxes for the pupil's own answer.

What is a PEE paragraph?

PEE stands for Point, Evidence, Explain. It is a three-part shape for answering a question about a text: state what you think, quote or describe the bit of the book that shows it, then say what that bit actually tells us. It is the standard way comprehension answers are taught in English primary and secondary schools.

What is the difference between PEE and PEEL?

PEEL adds a fourth step — Link — where the paragraph is tied back to the question or forward to the next point. That is the only difference. You will also meet PETAL, PEA and a handful of others; they are all the same idea with a different final letter.

For primary, PEE is enough and PEEL is worth introducing in Year 6 as preparation for secondary. Adding the Link too early tends to produce a tacked-on sentence that repeats the Point, which is worse than not having one.

Why is the Explain box always the empty one?

Because the first two steps are retrieval and the third is inference, and they are not the same skill wearing different hats. A child can find a quotation without understanding it. Explaining requires them to say something the book does not say — and many children believe that answering from the text means never going beyond it.

The most useful thing you can tell them is that Explain is where you are allowed to have an opinion, as long as the Evidence pays for it. That reframing does more than any number of sentence stems.

How do you teach Point, Evidence, Explain?

Give them the Point. For the first few, do not make them find it — hand it over so all their effort goes on the last two boxes.
Model a bad Explain on purpose and ask what is missing. "This shows he was scared" after a quotation about being scared explains nothing, and children spot that instantly in someone else's work.
Ban the phrase "this shows that" for one lesson. It is the sentence starter that lets a child restate the evidence and feel finished.
Keep the evidence short. A quotation longer than a line is usually hiding the fact that they have not found the right bit.
Read the three boxes aloud as one paragraph. If it does not sound like a paragraph, it is not one yet.

From the classroom

My best year for this came from a small change to the order: I started making children write Explain first, before they went looking for evidence. They write what they think the answer means, and only then hunt for the line that proves it. Doing it that way round they cannot restate the quotation, because they have not read it yet — and the search becomes purposeful instead of a scan for anything vaguely relevant.

Sentence stems for the Explain box

This suggests that … because …
The word "…" makes the reader feel …
The author chose this so that we …
We already knew …, so this tells us …
This matters because later …

Notice that every one of them requires a because or a consequence. Any stem a child can complete without adding information is not worth putting on the wall.

Which year groups is PEE for?

Years 4 to 6. In Year 4, give the Point and the Evidence and teach only the Explain. In Year 5, give the Point. In Year 6, all three, plus PEEL for the children heading into secondary who will meet it in September. Below Year 4 the structure gets in the way — teach answering in a full sentence with a because first, which is PEE in miniature anyway.

Try it now

Take a question the class answered thinly last week and rebuild the answer in the three boxes on the board. Seeing where their version stopped is worth more than any explanation of the structure.