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Story Starters and Writing Prompts for Creative Writing
Writing Teaching Heart & Soul . Writing Teaching Heart & Soul .

Story Starters and Writing Prompts for Creative Writing

Story starters, or writing prompts, are a great way to get middle school students into creative writing. Story starter sentences get the creative juices flowing by giving students the opening sentence or first sentence of a short story. Having an opening line is easier than staring at a blank page. It gets students to write a story even when they don’t feel creative!

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Scaffold Writing Instruction to Help Students Become Confident Writers
Writing, Teaching, Literacy, English Language Arts Teaching Heart & Soul . Writing, Teaching, Literacy, English Language Arts Teaching Heart & Soul .

Scaffold Writing Instruction to Help Students Become Confident Writers

It’s so important to scaffold writing during the writing process so that writing tasks are more accessible to students.

Writing success comes from these scaffolding strategies, such as using mentor sentences, mentor texts, and graphic organizers.

When teachers support students with scaffolds such as a graphic organizer or a sentence frame, they become confident writers who see writing success!

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Citing Text Evidence: Teaching Strategies
English Language Arts, How to Teach Teaching Heart & Soul . English Language Arts, How to Teach Teaching Heart & Soul .

Citing Text Evidence: Teaching Strategies

Citing text evidence is a critical skill for students to master, as it not only improves their writing and reading comprehension, but it also teaches them how to think critically and make arguments based on evidence. As educators, it is our responsibility to teach our students how to properly cite text evidence in order to prepare them for success in their academic careers and personal lives.

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