Embedding quotes within a larger piece of writing is another one of those elusive skills that can be a challenge to break down and teach. It’s not a skill that students learn through osmosis or some other mystical way. Teaching students how to embed quotes takes a lot of scaffolding, examples, and practice. And because I like to break down complex skills into smaller steps, I thought I would share some resources to help!
Teaching students how to effectively and seamlessly embed direct quotes and paraphrases into their writing, especially literary analysis, can be overwhelming for both teacher and student, which is why I offer 3 Tips for Teaching Writing in the Secondary ELA Classroom. Here, I encourage educators that when teaching writing, it’s very important to break down the process into manageable steps and focus on one skill at a time, building time into your instruction for repetition and lots of practice.
Resources for Teaching Embedding Quotes
To help the ever-busy teacher with writing instruction, teaching direct quotes and paraphrasing, in particular, I created several resources that are absolutely perfect for middle grades and high school classrooms that are ready to roll out with little prep!
Common Core and Embedding Quotes
In Embedding Quotes: A Common Core Lesson About Writing with Quotations, teachers are provided with a 57-slide EDITABLE PowerPoint presentation that offers direct instruction, brainstorming activities, a student reference sheet, practice worksheets, and even a blank worksheet to connect the skills practice directly to what you are doing in the classroom. But that’s not even everything that’s included! There is so much for teachers to dive into. Use all of it or whatever works best for your instruction.
What teachers are saying about Embedding Quotes: A Common Core Lesson About Writing with Quotations:
“This was such a helpful resource! My students have struggled to use evidence from a text to defend their arguments, so this lesson did a great job walking them through the necessary steps to introduce, cite, and explain their quotations. I appreciate the attention to detail with using punctuation. Good examples included.” -JoAnna W. (used with 7th grade)
“I have used this resource over and over in my high school special education English classroom. Quoting text is an extremely difficult concept for my students to grasp, this resource gets right to the point and reinforces what is being taught in the classroom. I highly recommend for emerging or struggling writers.” – Erin S. (used with 10th and 11th grade).
Writing Spotlight Mini Units
Writing Spotlight: Writing about Quotes will help you get students past the basic “This quote shows…” and “In this quote…” ways to embed quotes within their writing. This resource will help you teach student writers to embed quotes in their essays in more sophisticated ways. With this resource, you’ll receive a considerably large PowerPoint for direct instruction, student resources, answer keys, and even writing examples.
This is definitely a fan favorite of teachers, and it helps to create competent and confident young writers. And there are several other Writing Spotlight Mini-Units worth exploring.
What teachers are saying about Writing Spotlight: Writing about Quotes:
“This resource was instrumental in shaping how I teach writing about quotes! My students “get it” (for the most part 🙂 ) after going through this presentation and practicing on their own! This helped me fill in gaps I didn’t know I had in my teaching. Absolutely worth a purchase.” -Jessica W. (used with 10th, 11th, and 12th)
“This resource takes everything that you want to teach students about writing quality commentary and articulates it in a way that students can relate and understand thoroughly. Thank you!!” – Rebecca P.
Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarizing
In Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarizing, students will get more instruction and support to understand what paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing is and how to execute these skills successfully. With this resource, you will receive an EDITABLE PowerPoint presentation for direct instruction, a PDF document with supplementary materials, classroom activities, excerpts, and examples.
What teachers are saying about Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarizing:
“I couldn’t be happier with this purchase! I’m using it with my 7th graders and today I used the PPT with a note-taking sheet, and it is challenging them in the best way possible. I can’t wait to start using the other supplemental materials. Great stuff.” – Bailey C.
“Excellent resource! I’ve had some of my 9th graders struggle when it came to summarizing, but this is just the bundle for them!” -Jennifer G.
Looking for more? Check out these other TPT resources!
Writing Spotlight Bundle: Teaching Writing in the Secondary ELA Classroom
Writing Spotlight: Writing in the Third Person
