Writing Terms

Lead – opening sentence that grabs reader’s attention, piques interest, etc.

Claim – sentence that states an opinion about a particular topic

Supporting Reasons- reasons that support the opinion stated in the claim

Supporting Details- examples, facts, etc. that describe or provide more detail

about the reasons

Evidence from text – examples, facts, statistics, direct quotes, etc. from text

used to support a claim in a written response

Quote- words taken directly from the text – use quotation marks to let your

reader know that these are not your words but are words copied exactly from

the text

Introduction to the Evidence – naming the text the evidence is taken from and

possibly a brief explanation of the text if it is not commonly known

i.e. USA Today (everyone knows it is a newspaper so don’t need to state

this)

Jones News (everyone does not know this is a classroom newsletter, so

simply add the phrase “classroom newsletter that is sent home to

parents” after the title)

Elaboration of evidence- (explains the evidence, the significance of the evidence,

and/ or the connection of the evidence)

Evidence is connected to other evidence included in answer and the topic

sentence (demonstrates an understanding of the relationships between these

pieces)

Closing Sentence/ Conclusion/ Clinching Statement- sentence or paragraph that

brings the piece to a close, restates the overall message, leaves the reader with

something to think about, etc.