What are sentence starters for an English essay?

Short openers for the four jobs in a paragraph: a claim, a quote, an explanation of what the words are doing, and a last sentence that lands. This pack fills each one with a line from Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, Jekyll and Hyde, Romeo and Juliet, or Ozymandias.

What is a commentary sentence?

The sentence after the quote. It points at a word and says what that word does. "The word unsex turns kindness into a problem she wants removed" is commentary. "This quote shows ambition" is not.

How do you introduce a quote in an essay?

Name who speaks, then put the short quote, then the act and scene in brackets. Do not start the sentence with the quote. Cut it to the words that do the work.

English resources/Sentence starters

Sentence starters

Openers for a claim, a quote, the explanation, and the last paragraph. Filled in with lines from the books on this site.

sheets.works/english/sentence-starters

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A young girl reading — A Young Girl Reading. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, about 1770. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

How to run this

Project one starter. Give them a quote they already know. Two minutes on paper. Then show a filled example. Then play today's sentence.

Claimfirst sentence Evidenceput the quote in Commentarywhat the words do Conclusionlast paragraph Verbsnot "shows"

A paragraph has four jobs

ClaimSay what you will prove.
EvidencePut the book's words in.
CommentarySay what those words are doing.
ConclusionLand it.

Kids get stuck on commentary. Print that page first.

One paragraph, filled in

Macbeth. Ambition. The line about the horse that jumps too far.

Claim

Macbeth kills because he wants more, not because he has a reason.

Evidence

He says he has "no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on th' other."

Commentary

The word "vaulting" makes ambition a horse that jumps too far and comes down on its head. He names the fall before he does the murder.

Conclusion

So the play tells you the end in Act 1. He does it anyway.

Mark the text

Circle one word that is doing the work. Write one verb from the list in the margin. Then write the paragraph. That is enough annotation.

These do not count

They name the job. They do not do it.

This quote shows that…

Does not count.

It names the job. It does not do it. Point at a word instead.

This suggests that…

Does not count.

Suggests is a shrug. Say what the word does.

This proves the theme of…

Does not count.

A theme is not a stamp. Tie the line to the claim you actually made.

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