Improve Student Essay Writing with Sentence Stems

How many times have you been grading essays and written something like “please explain this” or “how does this answer the prompt”? It can be very difficult to pull an explanation out of your students. The key is to use sentence stems to get your students to explain their justification, analysis, or evidence while relating it back to their claim or thesis statement. This ultimately allows them to answer the prompt. I’m showing you exactly how to use sentence stems to improve your students’ essay writing while supporting them in the way that they need you to.

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[professormarkegan]

Sentence stems - this is a great method! Really great tips! I will direct my students towards the video. There is so much more to essay writing than the mere 'writing' of it! I have just released a video on my channel where I use the metaphor of a 'chain' to demonstration there are 5 key interlinking parts to an essay that gets the high marks! all the best, Dr Egan

[kelliorr]

I require at least 2-4 sentences of analysis from my students. We do an If...then... sentence, a Because sentence, and then try to relate the experience/idea/topic to the real word before bringing it back to the story/article at hand. Do you have a video that expands on this level of analysis?

[petitionerinzahn]

Do you know of any one who made a video on the use of rhyme in narrative structure?

[ariannaholtwick]

Hi! I've tried to use "This evidence shows...." and similar sentence stems, but I find students still just restate the prompt without going deeper into the explanation of their evidence. Some just can't connect the dots.