Sometimes the most difficult struggle for our students is actually putting pen to paper and generating text. They are unsure of how to start and how to develop their ideas and sometimes their frustration causes them to quit before they start. Writing frames are an evidence-based approach to writing instruction that will help your students get started in developing academic text by providing them with sentence starters so that they can learn the language of genre writing and transcribe their ideas more easily. Writing frames are a scaffold that should be used consistently and removed after students begin to demonstrate proficiency for each text type.
Check out the frames for Problem/Solution, Cause/Effect, Compare/Contrast. I recommend creating worksheets for students using these frames or writing them on the board and having students copy them into their notebooks.
These are great. I’ve gone so far as to use a fill-in-the-blank format with my HSE students to use as a “frame” to learn the format of a five paragraph argumentative essay, using sentence starters much like the ones in this resource. It really helps those who struggle when they are first learning this type of essay and have no idea where to begin. Plus it’s a visual reference to help memorize the format. This gave me some new ones to use, so thanks for sharing!