Before starting a Guided Drafts assignment, we recommend that students have done some pre-writing and have an idea of what they want to write. Feel free to use your own materials, but here are some optional pre-writing materials! You can use these documents in conjunction with each other, or choose one to prepare your students for the assignment.
To assign a Guided Draft, click here!
💡 All the pre-writing worksheets below are designed to work either as printed paper handouts or as PDF files that students can type into directly. To complete worksheets digitally, students should download PDFs to their computers before typing into them. They can then send or upload the saved PDFs to share their work with you.
Persuasive Essay Pre-Writing Materials
Argumentative Essay Pre-Writing Materials
Expository/Informational Pre-Writing Materials
Planning for All Expository/Informational Essays
Planning for Cause/Effect and Compare/Contrast Essays
Narrative Essay Pre-Writing Materials
- Brainstorming Conflict
- Helps students brainstorm a conflict for their narrative by considering character desires and challenges
- Developing Setting and Characters
- Helps students brainstorm details about their narrative’s setting and characters (especially helpful for planning how to set the scene at the beginning of a narrative)
- Outlining Your Narrative’s Conflict
- Supports students as they plan out their narrative’s main conflict in more detail (especially helpful for developing the action in a narrative’s middle section)
- Brainstorming Theme from Conflict
- Helps students brainstorm a theme for their narrative by considering how the main conflict will impact the story’s characters (especially helpful for planning the end of their narrative)
Literary Analysis Pre-Writing Materials
Poetry Analysis Pre-Writing Materials
Rhetorical Analysis Essay Pre-Writing Materials
- Generating a Thesis
- Helps students identify the author's purpose and rhetorical choices in order to land on a thesis
- Analyzing a Text to Develop a Thesis
- Helps students analyze the rhetorical choices an author makes, selecting the choices that best support the author's purpose in order to develop a thesis
- Finding and Analyzing Evidence
- Helps students collect evidence of an author's choices from a text and identify how these choices impact the audience and support the author's purpose
- Outlining
- Supports students as they plan out their essay in more detail
Compare and Contrast (Text Analysis) Essay Pre-Writing Materials
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SAT® Essay Pre-Writing Materials
Learn more about Guided Drafts
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