Guides

Looking for a specific template to support your writing?

Choose a title in the list below to find detailed scaffolds that make explicit what is expected in many different types of discussion posts and comments on Youth Voices.

Once you’ve internalized these guides, we encourage you to mix and match different paragraphs and to go beyond the use of a guide as well.

Assessment and Reflection

Choosing A Topic for a Research Paper

Speculating on an Inquiry

Portfolio Cover Letter / Carta de presentación de portafolio

Something I wish you knew… This is important because… Open Badges

Artist’s Statement

Crafting a Shakespearean Sonnet

Story of my making

Pitch Your News Story

Commenting

Comment on a poem about a flower or vegetable

Agree/Disagree Response

General Discussion Response

Comments as a Genre

Quoting a Source in a Comment

8 Intriguing Strategies to Continue the Discussion

Comment on a Work of Art, Photograph, Poem… / Opina sobre una obra de arte, fotografía, poema …

Commenting Template

Shakespearean Sonnet Response / Respuesta soneto de Shakespeare

Responding to Another Person’s Work of Art

Commenting on a Poem

Essays

Quoting a speech, conversation, trip, assembly, guest speaker, panel discussion, video, event…

Three Questions

Signal Words

Freewriting and the Open-ended Writing Process

Class Study or Inquiry

Personal Inquiry

Dialogue of Authors or Characters Showing Different Opinions

Revision

Citing Sources

Letters to the Next Mayor of Your City or Town (Basic)

Letters to the Next Mayor of Your City or Town (General)

Letter to the Next Mayor of Your City or Town (Developed)

Reporting on a Game

Describing Your Neighborhood

Big Idea

Video Treatment and Template

Dear Leaders of America

Literature Response

Explore Independent Reading

Make Connections

Book Connections

Media Connections

Social Media Connections

World Connections

Questioning and Speculating

Track a Literary Element

Tracking the Themes / Seguimiento de los Temas

Tracking the Characters

Tracking the Plot / Guía de comentario literario: El seguimiento de la trama

Tracking the Point of View

Analyze with a Literary Element

Character Traits and Relationships

Character Archetypes

Character Analysis Introduction

Plot Analysis

Chapter Essay

More Ways of Responding

Noticing after making

Questions to help you respond to a poem

Multimedia Response

Reviewing a Scratch Project – Ethical Story

Art or Artifact Dialectical Notes

Response to a Simulation

Beginning/ Middle / End

Annotations Instructions Images (NowComment)

Non-Fiction Text Response

Annotations Instructions

Studying Civically Engaged Writing and Media on NowComment

Adding a quotation to a discussion

Basic Response to a Non-Fiction Article or Book

Developed Response to a Non-Fiction Article or Book

Response to a Wikipedia article

Dialectical Notes (Google Docs Template)

Five Reliable Sources

Citing Internet Sources

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in an Election Debate

First Questions

Poems and Stories

Indelible Moments (from “Little Things are Big”)

Horse and Bear Fable with Dialogue Punctuation

Writing Prose Poetry Paragraphs like Cisneros in “My Name”

Writing Like Willie Perdomo

Writing Like George Ella Lyon

Guides by Paul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Youth Voices is an open publishing platform for youth. The site is organized by teachers with support from the National Writing Project. Opinions expressed by writers are their own.

All work on Youth Voices is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License